UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


6 

OUR    JOURNEY    TO    THE 
HEBRIDES.    BY   JOSEPH 
PENNELL     AND     ELIZABETH 
ROBINS    PENNELL 


NEW  YORK:  HARPER  &>  BROTHERS,  PRINTERS  <2r> 
PUBLISHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE,  MDCCCLXXXIX 


Copyright,  1889,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  riahU  reserved. 


DA 


PREFACE. 


THE  greater  part  of  "  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebri- 
des" was  published  originally  in  HARPER'S  MAG- 
AZINE. When  it  appeared  it  was  severely  criticised, 
and  we  were  taken  to  task  for  not  discovering  in 
Scotland  and  the  Scotch  what  has  been  made  the 
fashion  to  find  there — for  not  giving  second-hand 
descriptions,  which  are  the  stock  in  trade  of  Scotch 
guide-books,  wrhether  romantic  or  real ;  in  a  word, 
for  not  staying  at  home  and  manufacturing  our 
journey  in  the  British  Museum. 

It  is  gradually  dawning  upon  us  that  this  is  what 
is  wanted  by  the  majority  of  critics.  To  go  to  a 
country  and  tell  what  really  happened  to  you — to 
dare  to  say,  for  the  information  of  future  cyclers  or 
a  travellers,  that  one  small  piece  of  road  is  bad,  that 
on  one  day  out  of  ten  or  fifteen  it  rained,  that  at 
one  small  hotel  you  were  uncomfortable  or  turned 
away,  is  enough  to  make  the  critic  declare  that 
you  have  found  everything  in  that  country  to  be 
^  awry.  This  was  our  fate  when  we  attempted  to 
describe  the  most  enjoyable  trip  we  ever  made — our 


450884 


vi  Preface, 

ride  across  France.  We  have  no  hesitation  in  say- 
ing that  our  trip  to  Scotland  was  the  most  raiser- 
able.  We  undertook  to  walk,  owing  to  the  misrep- 
resentations of  people  who  we  do  not  believe  ever 
in  their  lives  walked  half  as  far  as  we  did  a  year 
ago.  As  we  have  shown,  when  tramping  became 
unendurable  we  went  by  coach  or  train,  by  steamer 
or  sail  -  boat ;  but  we  walked  far  enough  to  see 
the  country  as,  we  venture  to  think,  it  has  seldom 
been  seen  by  other  travellers.  For,  with  all  its  draw- 
backs, walking  has  this  one  advantage:  not  only  do 
you  stop  at  the  correct  show-places  on  your  route, 
but  you  go  slowly  over  the  unknown  country  which 
lies  between  them.  That  the  weather  in  the  West- 
ern Highlands  and  Islands  is  vile  is  .a  fact  which 
cannot  be  denied,  though  to  mention  it  is  held  to  be 
a  crime.  But,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who,  because 
we  speak  of  the  rain  and  of  the  fatigue  of  walking, 
think  we  shut  our  eyes  to  everything  else  on  our 
journey,  let  us  say  here,  once  and  for  all,  that  we 
found  the  whole  country  BEAUTIFUL  and  full  of  the 
most  WONDERFUL  EFFECTS  ;  but  we  must  also  add 
that  it  is  the  most  abominable  to  travel  through, 
and  its  people  are  the  most  down-trodden  on  God's 
earth. 

This  is  the  best  and  most  concise  description  of 
the  Western  Highlands  and  Islands  that  could  be 
given. 

Because  we  saw  and  described  the  actual  condi- 
tion of  the  population,  and  ignored  the  pleasures — 


Preface.  vii 

in  which  we  might  have  joined — of  a  handful  of  land- 
lords and  sportsmen  whose  fathers  brought  about 
this  condition,  and  who  themselves  are  fighting  to 
maintain  it,  we  have  been  asked  what  is  the  use  of 
digging  up  ancient  history  ?  Thank  Heaven,  it  is 
now  two  years  since  the  Crofters'  Act  was  passed  by 
Parliament ;  but  when  we  were  in  the  Islands  the 
first  test  case  of  a  tenant  pjeading  against  the  land- 
lord who  wished  to  evict  him  was  tried,  and  gained 
by  the  tenant.  While  we  were  in  Barra,  the  disen- 
franchisement  of  the  entire  island  was  accomplished 
by  a  trick  which  the  most  unscrupulous  American 
politician  would  not  have  dared  to  play.  The 
Crofters'  Commission  had  then  just  begun  to  re- 
duce rents — fifty-seven  per  cent,  is  the  average  re- 
duction— and  to  cancel  arrears.  It  has  raised  rents 
on  certain  estates,  is  an  argument  used  by  land- 
lords^who  forget  to  tell  you  that  where  rents  have 
been  raised  they  have  been  compelled  to  give  back 
pasture -land  to  the  crofters.  It  was  but  a  few 
weeks  after  our  return  to  London  that  a  rebellion 
broke  out  in  the  Island  of  Lewis,  and  was  quelled 
only  by  the  decision  of  the  Edinburgh  Court,  which 
declared  deer  not  to  be  protected  by  law;  so  that  for 
the  rest  of  the  winter  crofters  and  cotters  ate  ven- 
ison with  their  oatmeal.  It  was  this  decision,  and 
not  the  war-ships,  which  prevented  open  insurrection 
in  all  the  Islands. 

Some  of  our  critics  have  been  good  enough  to  in- 
form us  that  crofters  were  never  turned  off  their 


viii  Preface. 

crofts  to  make  room  for  deer.  With  those  who  re- 
fuse to  accept  the  testimony  officially  published  in 
the  Blue-books  there  is  no  use  to  enter  into  a  dis- 
cussion. For  those  who  know  little  of  the  subject, 
and  for  whom  Blue-books  would  necessitate  long 
study,  here  are  the  facts — facts  which  no  one  can 
question — in  a  nutshell.  We  quote  from  an  article 
on  "The  Crofters  of  the  Highlands,"  published  in 
the  Westminster  Review  for  February,  1888: 

"Iu  addition  to  these  many  injustices"  (injustices,  that  is, 
suffered  by  the  crofters),  "  there  is  one  which  in  certain  dis- 
tricts almost  overshadows  them  all ;  namely,  the  absorption 
of  vast  areas,  embracing  much  fertile  land  in  deer  forests.  It 
matters  little  whether  crofters  were  actually  evicted  to  make 
room  for  deer,  or  whether  sheep  farms  have  been  converted 
to  this  purpose ;  both  have  happened  very  largely,  with  the 
result  that,  according  to  the  Royal  Commissioners,  about  two 
million  acres  are  now  devoted  to  deer  forests.  Large  as  this 
figure  is,  it  is  considerably  below  the  mark,  as  has  been  shown 
by  even  better  authorities  on  the  subject.  Nor  must  it  be 
supposed  that  deer  forests  consist  merely  of  barren  and  worth- 
less land.  Unless  there  is  a  large  amount  of  good  grass-land 
in  a  forest  the  deer  would  starve,  and  all  this  good  land  in 
times  past  supported  a  large  population,  whose  descendants 
are  now  suffering  destitution  in  the  bare  and  unfruitful  re- 
gions near  the  coast." 

To  their  shame  be  it  said,  the  American  million- 
aires who  are  beginning  to  rent  these  deer  forests 
are  the  men  who  are  now  doing  the  most  to  encour- 
age the  continuance  in  their  present  position  of  the 
sons  of  the  land-grabbers,  or,  we  should  say,  the  he- 
roes of  the  ancient  history  and  romance  of  the 
country. 


Preface.  ix 

There  is  another  evil  of  these  great  deer  forests 
which  should  not  be  forgotten.  A  crofter,  after 
working  all  day,  often  has  to  sit  up  all  night  to  keep 
these  beasts,  which  were  supposed  to  be  private  prop- 
erty, out  of  his  little  croft.  For  if  the  deer  eat  all 
his  crops,  he  had  no  redress  ;  if  the  crofter  shot 
one  of  them,  or  hurt  it  in  any  way  in  driving  it 
out,  you  may  be  sure  the  factor  made  him  suffer 
for  it — at  one  time  he  would  most  likely  have  been 
evicted.  We  want  it  to  be  understood  that  in  these 
vast  tracts  of  deer  forest  none  but  sportsmen  and 
game  -  keepers  are  allowed  to  go.  If  your  house 
were  to  lie  on  one  side  and  the  village  on  the  other, 
you  would  have  to  go  miles  around  to  reach  it. 
Nor  can  you  go  near  streams  which  run  in  the 
open  country,  for  fear  you  may  disturb  the  fish, 
which  are  preserved  for  English  or  American  sports- 
men. 

Just  as  we  are  writing  this  Preface  we  have  be- 
gun to  receive,  for  the  first  time  in  our  lives,  anony- 
mous letters.  Hitherto  we  did  not  believe  there 
were  people  stupid  and  imbecile  enough  to  write 
such  things.  One  of  these  creatures,  who  is  ashamed 
of  his  own  identity,  encloses,  with  an  amusing  letter 
written  on  Kansas  City  Club  paper — which,  how- 
ever, does  not  reveal  whether  he  is  the  president  or 
the  hall  porter  of  the  club — an  article  of  a  column 
and  a  half  from  the  Scotsman,  which  calls  our 
"  Journey  to  the  Hebrides  "  "  sentimental  nonsense," 
"  culpable  misrepresentation,"  "  amazing  imperti- 


x  Preface. 

nence."  And  then,  without  attempting  to  show  in 
what  the  misrepresentation  or  nonsense  or  imperti- 
nence consists,  the  writer  of  this  article  goes  on  to 
give  his  own  ideas  on  the  subject  of  the  crofters, 
quoting  statements  made  from  other  sources,  and 
attributing  them  to  us,  misrepresenting  us,  and  yet 
not  attempting  to  contradict  any  one  fact  brought 
forward  in  any  one  of  the  articles,  but  taking  up 
space  in,  the  paper  to  contradict  the  reports  of  the 
Scotsman's  own  reporter,  printed  but  a  few  months 
before.  We  are  accused  of  exaggerating  the  mis- 
ery of  the  people.  We  have  lying  by  our  side  as 
we  write,  column  after  column,  amounting  to  page 
after  page,  from  the  Scotsman,  which  is  by  no  means 
the  crofters'  friend,  giving  detailed  pictures  of  this 
misery,  which  we,  in  our  generalizing,  could  not  ap- 
proach. Here  is  a  specimen  taken  at  hazard  from 
the  pile  of  clippings.  "A  Tale  of  Poverty"  it  is 
headed,  and  it  was  published  January  17,  1888: 

"  Quite  a  typical  case  of  poverty  was  that  of  Donald  Mac- 
kenzie, a  middle-aged  man,  who  occupied  a  half  croft  at  a 
rental  of  £2.  He  was  married,  with  five  young  children,  and 
they  had  been  living  exclusively  on  potatoes,  occasionally 
with  fish,  for  three  months,  until  they  got  a  half  boll  of  meal 
from  a  destitution  fund.  That  was  now  done,  and  he  had 
that  day  borrowed  a  bowlful  from  a  neighbour.  He  had  fished 
at  Stornoway  in  the  summer,  and  had  kept  the  family  alive; 
but  his  wife  assured  the  stranger  that  he  had  not  brought 
home  a  single  shilling.  She  added  that  she  herself  had  not 
had  shoes  for  four  years,  and  the  children  were  no  better  off. 
A  very  similar  case  was  that  of  Norman  Macmillan.  He  was 
a  cottar  and  fisherman,  having  a  half  lot  from  another  tenant. 
He  had  also  not  taken  home  a  shilling  from  the  fishing  last 


Preface.  xi 

year;  and,  except  working  on  his  lot,  be  could  find  nothing 
to  do  until  the  fishing  season  came  on  again.  He  had  seven 
children,  the  eldest  twelve  years.  They  had  eaten  up  their 
potatoes  by  the  beginning  of  winter,  and  now  they  had  but  a 
little  barley-meal  left.  He  did  not  know  what  to  do  now,  he 
said,  unless  Providence  opened  the  way  for  them.  They  had 
often  been  without  food,  he  said,  although  they  had  kept  it. 
There  was  none  to  relieve  them.  He  stated  that  formerly 
they  used  to  get  credit  from  the  merchants  while  they  were 
engaged  at  the  fishing,  but  that  they  did  not  get  now.  One 
of  the  houses  visited  in  this  township  was  that  of  the  wife  of 
Donald  Macmillan,  one  of  the  men  now  standing  trial  in  Ed- 
inburgh on  a  charge  of  having  taken  part  in  the  Park  deer 
raid.  Macmillan  lived  in  a  very  small  cot  at  the  back  of  his 
father's  house,  which  his  father  had  used  as  a  barn.  It  was 
very  poorly  furnished  even  for  that  locality.  There  was  a 
family  of  five  small  children,  and  there  was  only  one  bed  in 
the  house,  with  one  blanket.  Three  of  the  children  slept  out 
with  a  neighbour.  Macmillan  cultivated  the  half  of  his  fa- 
ther's croft,  and  had  one  cow.  He  was  also  a  fisherman,  hav- 
ing a  share  in  a  boat  of  forty-one  feet  keel ;  but,  though  he 
had  attended  the  Barra  fishing  last  summer,  he  had  made 
nothing.  His  wife  had  got  a  boll  of  meal  from  the  destitution 
fund,  but  besides  that,  she  had  only  two  barrels  of  potatoes. 
Previous  to  getting  that  meal,  they  had  lived  exclusively  on 
potatoes.  She  stated  that  when  her  husband  went  out  to  the 
deer  raid,  there  was  but  one  barrel  of  potatoes;  but  since  then, 
she  explained,  she  had  fallen  back  upon  the  seed." 

• 

Here  is  another,  from  January  20th  of  the  same 
year,  when  four  columns  were  devoted  to  crofter 
affairs  : 

"From  here  a  drive  of  about  four  miles  brought  the  visit- 
ors to  Arebruich — a  township  fixed  in  a  spot  which  was  sure- 
ly never  intended  for  human  beings.  As  one  passes  onwards 
from  Balallan,  the  soil  gradually  sinks  lower  and  lower  on 
the  north  side  of  the  loch  until,  when  Arebruich  is  reached, 
it  is  almost  level  to  the  water's  edge.  The  result  is  that  the 


xii  Preface. 

land  is  literally  a  floating  bog.  and  it  is  a  miracle  how  the  poor 
people,  who  labour  away  at  the  barren  scraps  of  earth  which 
show  some  signs  of  cultivation,  manage  to  get  any  food  raised 
out  of  them.  A  rude,  clayish  pathway  extends  for  some  lit- 
tle distance  from  the  main  road,  but  it  soon  stops,  as  if  the 
builders  had  thrown  up  the  work  in  disgust.  There  are  six- 
teen crofts,  such  as  they  arc,  in  the  township,  and  these  are 
occupied  by  twenty-six  families.  The  first  house  visited  was 
that  of  John  Mackinnon,  a  stout,  good-looking  man  in  spite 
of  his  surroundings.  He  lives  on  his  mother's  lot,  which  is 
rented  at  £2.15».,  exclusive  of  taxes.  His  mother,  who  is 
eighty  years  old,  lives,  along  with  an  unmarried  daughter,  in 
an  adjoining  house.  He  paid  35s.  two  years  ago  to  the  factor, 
but  since  then  he  has  been  able  to  pa}'  nothing.  He  fished  as 
a  hired  man  last  year  at  Lybster;  but  his  earnings  were  so 
small  that  when  his  season's  board  was  paid  he  had  only  9rf. 
left.  A  friend  had  to  lend  him  his  passage- money.  At  pres- 
ent he  has  three  barrels  of  potatoes  left,  but  neither  meal  nor 
money.  He  has  two  of  a  family,  besides  himself  and  wife. 
They  have  to  live  on  potatoes.  His  mother  never  got  any 
parochial  relief,  and  she  and  her  daughter  have  to  struggle 
along  as  best  they  can.  He  has  one  cow  and  eight  sheep. 
When  the  destitution  meal  was  being  distributed  he  got  three 
stones,  and  his  mother  an  equal  quantity.  He  does  not  know 
what  to  do,  and  has  no  prospects  whatever.  The  next  house 
presented  a  worse  case.  It  was  that  of  Widow  Murdo  Mac- 
leod,  a  sister  of  Mackinnon.  She  said  her  husband  was 
drowned  at  Loch  Seaforth  seven  years  ago,  when  they  were 
only  ten  months  married.  She  had  one  daughter,  who  was 
born  shortly  after  her  husband  was  drowned.  She  has  made 
her  living  all  these  years  by  knitting  and  sewing  and  odd 
jobs,  but  never  got  any  help  from  the  Parochial  Board,  though 
she  applied  several  times.  She  has  neither  land  nor  stock, 
and  never  had  any.  She  generally  gets  a  few  potatoes  from 
her  brother  at  harvest  time.  She  has  half  a  barrel  on  hand 
at  present,  and  about  a  stone  of  meal,  the  remains  of  what 
was  got  from  the  destitution  fund.  She  al\va}'s  tried  to  be 
industrious,  and  therefore  was  never  actually  in  absolute 
want.  She  always  enjoyed  good  health,  and  felt  very  thank-' 
ful  for  it.  The  hut  in  which  this  woman  and  her  daughter 


Preface.  xiii 

live  is  wretchedly  poor,  and  the  single  bed  is  barely  covered 
with  a  thin  blanket.  "* 

On  January  20th,  in  a  leader,  the  same  paper 
declared  that  the  facts  which  we  have  given  are 
"  distressing,"  and  ought  to  excite  "  interest "  and 
sympathy.  There  is  no  talk  here  of  sentimental 
nonsense  !  Distressing  we  should  think  they  were. 
One  cannot  help  saying  that  it  is  nothing  less  than 
infamous  that  a  mere  handful  of  landlords  should 
have  controlled  the  destiny  of,  and  extracted  every 
penny  from,  the  population  of  these  Islands  —  the 
people  whom  they  have  kept  for  generations  in  pov- 
erty, not  that  they  might  improve  the  land,  but  that 
they  might  pass  their  own  time  in  useless  idleness 
and  cruel  sport.  It  is  not  a  question  of  over-popu- 
lation. The  real  evil  is  that  the  Islanders  have  been 
ground  down  and  tyrannized  over  simply  to  gratify 
the  amusements  of  their  masters.  We  have  heard 
again  and  again  that  the  position  of  a  landlord  does 
not  pay;  if  it  did  not,  the  landlords  would  sell  their 
estates  to-morrow. 

For  weeks,  early  in  this  year  (1888),  every  Scotch 
and  English  paper,  even  to  the  Times,  had  columns 
about  the  misery  of  the  crofters — that  is,  columns 
of  extracts  similar  to  these  we  have  quoted.  What- 
ever reasons  were  given  for  it,  no  one  questioned 
their  destitution.  And  yet  within  a  year  all  these 
reports  are  forgotten;  and  for  generalizing  and  not 

*  See  note  at  the  end  of  Preface. 


xiv  Preface. 

going  into  details — heart-breaking  details — we  are 
called  sickly  sentimentalists.  So  glaring  is  this 
complete  forgetfulness  and  contradiction  that  we 
cannot  help  taking  some  notice  of  it,  and  calling  the 
attention  of  these  papers  to  their  own  reports. 

As  to  the  rest  of  our  critics,  they  did  not  even 
know  enough  to  contradict  themselves,  except  in 
one  case,  which  we  have  pointed  out  elsewhere, 
and  their  other  criticism  is  not  directed  against  our 
facts. 

In  dwelling  upon  the  misery  of  the  people,  we  do 
not  pretend,  as  has  been  suggested,  to  give  an  off- 
hand settlement  of  the  economic  problems  of  the 
Islands.  We  merely  state  what  we  saw,  what  it 
was  impossible  to  avoid  seeing,  wherever  we  went. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  not  merely  a  mi- 
nority, or  even  a  majority,  but  the  entire  population 
who  exist  in  this  condition  of  absolute  wretchedness 
and  semi-starvation.  With  the  exception  of  a  few 
small  towns  on  the  coast  for  the  convenience  of 
tourists  and  landlords,  you  find  throughout  the  Isl- 
ands but  the  occasional  beautiful  castle  or  shooting- 
lodge,  or  great  farm-house,  and  the  many  crowded 
stone  piles  politely  called  cottages.  And  it  was  be- 
cause we  were  more  struck  with  this  misery  than 
with  the  romance  of  the  past  that,  our  journey 
over,  we  interested  ourselves  in  learning  something 
of  the  immediate  reasons  for  the  present  condition 
of  the  Western  Highlanders  and  Islanders,  rather 
than  in  reading  about  the  murders  and  massacres 


Preface.  xv 

of  the  MacGregor  and  the  Macleod,  the  Mac  this 
and  the  Mac  that.  We  were  not  blind  to  the 
beauty,  the  sternness,  the  wildness  of  the  country; 
but  the  sadness  and  sorrows  of  its  people  impressed 
us  even  more  than  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  their 

land. 

JOSEPH  PENNELL. 

ELIZABETH  ROBINS  PENXELL. 
WESTMINSTER,  November  20,  1888.* 


*  Even  while  we  revise  this  Preface  more  news  comes 
from  the  Island  of  Lewis.  On  Lady  Matheson's  estates  rents 
have  been  reduced  42  and  53  per  cent. ,  and  arrears  cancelled 
84  and  91  per  cent.  This  is  from  the  Times  of  December 
20th: 

"CuoFTERS'  RENTS. — The  Crofter  Commission  yesterday  issued 
their  first  decisions  in  relation  to  Lady  Matheson's  property  in 
the  Island  of  Lewis,  the  centre  of  the  laud  agitation  last  winter. 
They  have  granted  an  average  reduction  of  42  per  cent,  on  the 
rental  of  150  crofter  tenants  in  the  parish  of  Barvas,  on  the  west 
side  of  Lewis.  The  arrears  of  rent  due,  which  was  a  striking  feat- 
ure in  Lewis,  have  been  cancelled  to  the  extent  of  84  per  cent.  Of 
a  total  of  £3422,  the  Commissioners  have  cancelled  £2043." 

If  there  had  not  been  injustice  before,  is  it  probable  that 
there  would  now  be  such  wholesale  reductions  and  cancel- 
lings  ?  We  suppose  it  is  sentimentalism  to  record  these  facts. 

CHRISTMAS-DAY,  1888. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

IN  THE  HIGHLANDS 3 

ON  THE  ISLANDS 83 

To  THE  EAST  COAST,  AND  BACK  AGAIN 167 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

Crofters'  Cottages  near  Uig,  Skye Frontispiece 

Vignette  for  First  Paper 1 

Tarbet,  Loch  Lomond 11 

Glencroe 15 

Loch  Restil 21 

Inverary 23 

Cross  at  Inverary 29 

Scotland  and  the  Hebrides 31 

Kilchrennan 37 

Loch  Leven,  from  Ballachulish 41 

Oban 43 

Coast  of  Mull 53 

Ross  of  Mull,  looking  towards  lona 59 

Headland  of  Gribun,  from  Ulva 65 

"  One  of  his  Strange  Things  Happened  " 77 

Vignette  for  Second  Paper 81 

In  the  Transept  of  the  Cathedral,  lona 85 

lona 87 

Tomb  of  Macleod 90 

Castle  Bay,  from  Barra 103 


xx  Illustration*. 

PACK 

Town  of  Barra 109 

Mountains  of  Harris,  from  Tarbet 113 

Gathering  Peat 125 

The  "Dunara  Castle" 131 

Interior  of  a  Weaver's  Cottage 135 

Doing  Skye  . 141 

A  real  Highland  Lassie 147 

Dunvegan  Castle 153 

Graveyard  of  the  Macleod 156 

Tail-piece 163 

Vignette  for  Third  Paper 165 

Fisher-boats  hauled  up  near  Buckie 183 

The  only  Castle  I  drew  .    . ' 186 

NearCullen • 187 

BitofMacduff 190 

Near  Banff 193 

Banff,  from  Macduff 195 

Fraserburgh 199 

In  the  Harbor,  Fraserburgh 203 

Gutters  at  Work,  Fraserburgh 207 

Coming  Home  from  the  Fisheries,  Fraserburgh      .     .     .211 

Entrance  to  the  Harbor  at  Montrose 215 

Ruins  at  Arbroath                                                              .  221 


IN  THE  HIGHLANDS. 

WE  never  looked  forward  to  a  pleasure  trip 
with  so  much  misery  as  we  did  to  our  journey  to 
the  Hebrides.  We  wanted  a  holiday. 

"  Go  to  Scotland,"  suggested  the  editor  of  HAR- 
PER'S. 

"Let  us  rather  wander  through  unexplored 
France,"  we  proposed,  in  a  long  letter,  though  we 
had  already  explored  it  for  ourselves  more  than 
once. 

"  Scotland  would  be  better,"  was  the  answer  in 
a  short  note. 

"But  why  not  let  us  discover  unknown  Hol- 
land ?"  we  asked,  as  if  it  had  not  been  discovered  a 
hundred  times  already. 

"  Scotland  would  be  better,"  was  still  the  answer, 
and  so  to  Scotland  we  went. 

It  was  a  country  about  which  we  cared  little,  and 
knew  less.  We  had  heard  of  Highlands  and  Low- 
lands, of  Melrose  and  Stirling,  but  for  our  lives 
we  could  not  have  pointed  them  out  on  the  map. 
The  rest  of  our  knowledge  was  made  up  of  con- 
fused impressions  of  Hearts  of  Mid-Lothian  and 


4  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

Painters'  Camps  in  the  Highlands,  Macbeths  and 
Kidnappers,  Skye  terriers  and  Shetland  shawls, 
blasted  heaths  and  hills  of  mist,  Rob  Roys  and 
Covenanters;  and,  added  to  these,  positive  con- 
victions of  an  unbroken  Scotch  silence  and  of 
endless  breakfasts  of  oatmeal,  dinners  of  haggis, 
and  suppers  of  whiskey.  Hot  whiskey  punch  is 
a  good  thing  in  its  way,  and  at  times,  but  not  as 
a  steady  diet.  Oatmeal  we  think  an  abomina- 
tion. And  as  for  haggis — well,  we  only  knew  it 
as  it  was  once  described  to  us  by  a  poet :  the 
stomach  of  some  animal  filled  with  all  sorts  of 
unpleasant  things  and  then  sewed  up.  We  re- 
called the  real  dinners  and  friendly  peasants  of 
France  and  Italy,  and  hated  the  very  name  of 
Scotland. 

It  will  easily  be  understood  that  we  could  not 
plan  a  route  out  of  our  ignorance  and  prejudice. 
It  remained  to  choose  a  guide,  and  our  choice,  I 
hardly  know  why,  fell  upon  Dr.  Johnson.  Every 
one  must  remember — I  say  this  though  we  did 
not  even  know  it  until  we  looked  into  the  matter 
— that  Dr.  Johnson  met  Boswell  in  Edinburgh, 
and  in  his  company  journeyed  up  the  east  coast 
as  far  as  Inverness,  then  across  the  Highlands  to 
the  west,  and  so  to  the  Hebrides,  coining  back  by 
way  of  Inverary,  Loch  Lomond,  and  Glasgow.  It 
looked  a  long  journey  on  the  map,  and  seemed  a 
weary  one  in  the  pages  of  Boswell  and  Johnson ; 


In  the  Highlands.  a 

but  as  if  this  were  not  bad  enough,  we  made  up 
our  minds,  for  the  sake  of  novelty,  to  walk. 

Of  our  preparations  for  the  journey  I  will  say 
nothing.  We  carried  less  than  Stanley  and  more 
than  the  average  tramp.  We  took  many  things 
which  we  ought  not  to  have  taken,  and  we  left  be- 
hind many  things  which  we  ought  to  have  taken. 
But  this  matters  little,  since  our  advice  to  all  about 
to  start  on  a  walking  tour  is,  Don't. 

On  the  28th  of  July  we  arrived  in. 

EDINBURGH, 

"a  city  too  well  known  to  admit  description." 
If  Dr.  Johnson  thought  so  a  hundred  years  ago, 
it  is  not  for  us,  who  propose  to  be  his  followers, 
to  differ  from  him.  Indeed,  during  our  stay  in 
that  city,  so  eager  were  we  to  be  faithful  to  him  in 
all  things  that  we  should  have  allowed  ourselves  to 
be  dined,  teaed  and  suppered,  even  as  he  was,  but 
for  an  obstacle.  The  only  person  whom  we  knew 
in  Edinburgh  was  away,  and  the  fame  of  our  com- 
ing had  not,  as  with  Dr.  Johnson,  gone  before  us. 

We  were  careful  to  find  St.  James's  Court, 
where  Boswell  lived,  and  where  clothes,  drying  in 
what  sun  there  is,  now  hang  from  his  windows. 
And  we  went  to  the  old  White  Horse  Inn,  where 
the  Doctor,  on  his  arrival,  stayed  until  Boswell 
came  to  carry  him  off  in  triumph ;  and  where 
probably  the  tourist  of  another  year  will  not  go, 


6  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

for  already  in  the  court-yard  are  signs  of  the  com- 
ing of  the  destroyer. 

We  had  resolved  to  reverse  the  order  of  their 
journey  by  going  to  the  Western  Islands  first,  and 
coming  home  along  the  east  coast.  In  this  way 
we  should  avoid  the  September  storms  which  kept 
them  in  the  Hebrides.  Now  we  also  decided  to  go 
straight  to  Glasgow,  and  not  to  stop  at  Hamilton, 
where  they  spent  a  night. 

On  Saturday,  July  30th,  we  began  our  walk  in 
a  cab,  and  continued  it  for  many  miles  in  a  rail- 
way-carriage. We  represented  to  ourselves  that 
the  country  between  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  of 
which  we  knew  nothing,  was  stupid,  and  that  we 
must  get  to  Glasgow  for  Sunday.  There  was  no 
earthly  reason  for  this,  but  it  was  an  excuse,  and 
we  made  the  most  of  it. 

Dr.  Johnson  says  that  "to  describe  a  city  so 
much  frequented  as 

GLASGOW 

is  unnecessary,"  and  again  wre  are  willing  to  take 
his  word  for  it.  But  its  Cathedral  was  the  first 
of  the  many  surprises  Scotland  had  in  store  for  us. 
We  had  heard  of  it,  but  that  was  all.  One  young 
lady  of  Glasgow,  fresh  from  a  tour  on  the  Con- 
tinent, told  us  that  she  had  never  seen  it.  AVe 
were  therefore  prepared  to  find  it  no  great  thing. 
The  exterior  did  not  disappoint  our  expectations, 


In  the  Highlands.  1 

but  we  have  seldom  been  more  impressed  with  an 
interior,  and  this  though  we  had  just  come  from 
the  loveliest  churches  of  England. 

The  crypt,  or  rather  the  under  church,  is  its 
pride,  as  indeed  it  well  may  be.  A  verger  stood 
smoking  a  pipe  at  the  south  door,  and  we  told 

him  what  we  thought.  J ,  after  three  years' 

work  in  the  English  cathedrals,  felt  himself  no 
mean  authority. 

"  It's  the  finest  in  the  world,"  said  the  verger. 

"  In  Great  Britain  perhaps,  but  not  in  Europe," 
said  J ;  for  we  had  been  but  a  moment  be- 
fore comparing  it,  as  it  now  is,  a  cold,  bare,  show- 
place,  to  the  under  church  of  Assisi  with  the  fres- 
cos on  the  walls,  the  old  lamps  burning  before 
altars,  the  sweet  smell  of  incense,  and  the  monks 
kneeling  in  prayer. 

"  I  only  tell  you  what  those  qualified  have  said," 
and  the  verger  settled  the  matter  and  J—  — 's  pre- 
tensions. 

It  was  in  the  Glasgow  crypt  Rob  Roy  gave  the 
warning  to  Frank  Osbaldistone.  The  guide-book 
recalled  the  incident,  which  we  had  forgotten.  In- 
deed the  farther  we  went,  the  more  we  were  re- 
minded that  to  travel  in  Scotland  is  to  travel 
through  the  "Waverley  Novels,  arid  that  these  to 
us  were  but  a  name.  Since  our  return  we  have 
tried  to  read  them  again,  to  be  quite  honest,  with 
but  indifferent  pleasure.  We  are  so  wanting  in 


8  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

appreciation  that  we  find  Scott's  description  of 
the  crypt  stupid,  and  we  are  not  thrilled  by  the 
daring  deeds  of  the  MacGregor. 

The  Art  Gallery  in  Glasgow  was  no  less  a  sur- 
prise to  us  than  the  Cathedral.  Its  catalogue  con- 
tains more  Titians,  Rembrandts.  Hobbemas,  and 
other  great  masters  than  any  other  in  Europe. 
But  if  we  wondered  at  the  catalogue,  we  were  still 
more  astonished  when  we  came  to  see  the  pictures ! 

We  stayed  in  Glasgow  until  Monday  morning, 
when  we  again  took  the  train,  but  this  time  for  a 
few  miles  only.  "We  bought  tickets  for  Kilpatrick, 
and  a  sharp  lookout  we  had  to  keep  for  it  from  the 
carriage  windows.  At  the  stations,  no  one  called 
the  names,  which,  in  true  British  fashion,  were  less 
easy  to  find  than  that  of  the  best  brand  of  mus- 
tard or  of  the  best  hotel  in  Glasgow.  At  Kil- 
patrick, when  I  pulled  my  head  in  after  the  usual 

search,  J was  already  at  the  opposite  door. 

He  did  not  care  where  he  was,  he  said ;  he  would 
get  out.  In  the  distance,  we  could  see  Dumbarton 
Rock  rising  from  the  plain  against  a  blue  sky. 
Here,  as  in  our  plans  for  the  day's  journey,  it  was 
the  one  prominent  landmark. 

Kilpatrick  is  said  to  have  been  the  birthplace  of 
St.  Patrick.  I  do  not  know  what  authority  Black* 
has  for  the  legend ;  certainly  not  that  of  the  vil- 

*Not  William,  but  the  guide-book  Black. 


In  the  Highlands.  9 

lagers.  St.  Patrick  was  no  British  man,  one  of 
them  told  us ;  and,  moreover,  he  never  lived  in 
Kilpatrick,  but  on  the  hill.  But  had  we  ever 
heard  of  Captain  Shonstone,  the  hairbor-maister  ? 
He  was  a  great  man. 

We  made  a  great  show  of  briskness  by  going 
the  long  way  round  by  the  canal.  This  was  the 
only  time  throughout  our  journey  that  we  turned 
from  the  main  road — except  to  take  a  short-cut. 
Mr.  Lee  Meriwether,  in  his  Tramp  Abroad,  thought 
it  an  advantage  of  walking  that  he  could  leave  the 
road  to  see  whatever  was  to  be  seen  near,  but  not 
from  it.  For  our  part,  after  the  first  mile,  we 
never  took  an  extra  step  for  any  sight;  that  is, 
whenever  our  knapsacks  were  on  our  backs.  At 
Dumbarton  we  did  not  even  climb  the  rock,  though 
Dr.  Johnson  walked  to  the  very  top.  Instead,  we 
lunched  and  talked  politics  with  the  British  work- 
man in  a  coifee  tavern. 

After  Dumbarton,  we  left  the  Clyde  to  follow 
the  Leven.  It  was  just  beyond  the  town  we  first 
saw  Ben-Lomond,  a  blue  shadow  on  the  horizon 
when  the  clouds  were  heavy  above  ;  a  high  bare 
mountain,  seamed  and  riven,  when  the  sun  shone 
upon  it.  We  lost  sight  of  it  in  a  succession  of 
long,  stupid  villages ;  on  the  shady  road,  where  the 
trees  met  overhead,  we  could  see  it  again  through 
the  net-work  of  branches.  Clouds  were  low  on  its 
heights,  and  a  veil  of  soft  light  rain  fell  before  it 


10  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

when,  having  left  our  knapsacks  in  the  inn  at  Bal- 
locli,  we  rowed  up  the  Leven,  a  little  quiet  river 
between  low  woods  and  flat  meadow-land,  to 

LOCH    LOMOND. 

It  was  the  first  Scotch  lake  we  saw,  and  we  thought 
it  very  like  any  other  lake. 

We  were  off  by  eight  in  the  morning.  It  was 
clear  and  cool,  like  an  October  day  at  home.  Our 
road  lay  for  a  while  close  to  the  loch,  then  turned 
and  went  round  the  parks  and  lawns  that  sloped 
gently  to  the  shore,  so  that  it  was  only  over  a  stone 
wall  or  through  a  gap  in  the  hedge  we  could  see 
the  blue  water  and  the  wooded  islands.  We  were 
now  on  the  fighting-ground  of  the  Colquhoun  and 
the  MacGregor,  we  learned  from  Black,  who — we 
know  it  to  our  cost — is  a  better  guide  to  the  ro- 
mance and  history  of  Scotland  than  to  its  roads. 
It  is  but  poor  comfort  when  you  ask  for  a  good 
route  to  be  given  a  quotation. 

Rob  Hoy  is  the  hero  of  Loch  Lomond,  and  if 
you  cross — as  we  did  not — to  the  other  side,  you 
may  see  his  cave  and  his  prison  and  a  lot  of  his 
other  belongings.  But  I  think  that  which  is  best 
worth  seeing  on  the  loch  is  the  Colquhoun's  vil- 
lage of  Luss,  with  its  neat,  substantial  cottages  and 
trim  gardens.  In  the  Highlands  you  can  have 
your  fill  of  tales  of  outlaws  and  massacres  and 
horrors;  but  it  is  not  every  day  you  come  to  a 


In  the  Highlands.  13 

village  like  this,  where  men  are  allowed  to  live  a 
little  better  than  their  beasts. 

At  the  Colquhoun  Arms  in  Luss  we  ate  our 
lunch,  and  that  was  our  undoing.  It  left  us  in  a 
mood  for  lounging,  and  we  had  still  eight  miles  to 
go.  We  found  it  harder  work  the  second  day 
than  the  first.  Our  knapsacks  weighed  like  lead, 
and  did  not  grow  lighter ;  each  mile  seemed  inter- 
minable. This  was  the  more  provoking  because 
with  every  step  the  way  grew  lovelier.  Almost 
all  the  afternoon  we  were  within  sight  of  the 
loch,  while  on  our  left  the  mountains  now  rose 
from  the  very  road-side,  and  hedges  gave  place  to 
hill-sides  of  ferns  and  heather-patched  bowlders. 
Used  as  we  both  were  to  cycling,  the  slowness  and 
monotony  of  our  pace  was  intolerable.  We  longed 
for  a  machine  that  would  carry  us  and  our  knap- 
sacks with  ease  over  the  hard,  dustless  road.  For 
one  mile  we  tried  to  keep  each  other  in  counte- 
nance. J was  the  first  to  rebel  openly.  The 

Highlands  were  a  fraud,  he  declared ;  the  knap- 
sack was  an  infernal  nuisance  and  he  was  a  fool  to 
carry  it.  About  three  miles  from  Tarbet  he  sat 
down  and  refused  to  go  any  farther. 

Just  then,  by  chance,  there  came  a  drag  full  of 
young  girls,  and  when  they  saw  us  they  laughed, 
and  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  And  likewise  a 
dog-cart,  and  the  man  driving,  when  he  first  saw 
us,  waved  his  hand,  taking  us  to  be  friends ;  but 


14  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

when  he  was  at  the  place  and  looked  at  us,  he  also 
passed  by  on  the  other  side.  But  two  tricyclers, 
as  they  journeyed,  came  where  we  were ;  and 
when  they  saw  us  they  had  compassion  on  us, 
and  came  to  us,  and  gathered  up  our  knapsacks 
and  set  them  on  their  machines  and  brought  them 
to  the  inn  and  took  care  of  them.  And  yet  there 
are  many  who  think  cyclers  nothing  but  cads  on 
casters ! 

To  tell  the  truth,  had  these  two  men  been 
modern  Rob  Roys,  we  would  have  yielded  up  our 
knapsacks  as  cheerfully ;  nor  would  we  have  sor- 
rowed never  to  see  them  again. 

As  we  went  on  our  way  lightly  and  even  gayly, 
we  came  to  the  inn  at 

TAUBKT, 

and  were  received  by  a  waiter  in  a  dress-coat.  It 
was  a  big  hotel  low  down  by  the  loch,  with  Ben- 
Lomond  for  opposite  neighbor.  The  company  at 
dinner  was  made  up  of  Englishmen  and  English- 
women. But  everybody  talked  to  everybody  else. 
An  Englishman,  it  seems,  becomes  civilized  in  the 
Highlands.  There,  those  he  sits  down  with  at 
dinner,  as  is  the  way  with  Frenchmen,  are  his 
friends ;  at  home,  he  would  look  upon  them  as  his 
enemies. 

After  dinner  we  went  to  walk  with  the  cy- 
clers. As  a  great  theatrical  moon  came  sailing  up 


Iii  the  Highlands.  1 7 

through  the  sky  behind  Ben-Lomond,  one  told  us 
in  broad  Scotch  how  from  the  Jungfrau  he  had 
once  watched  the  moon  rise,  and  at  the  sight  had 
bur-r-r-st  into  tee-eers.  But  just  then,  had  I  wept 
at  all,  it  must  have  been  from  sheer  weariness,  so 
I  turned  my  back  upon  the  beauty  of  the  evening 
and  went  to  bed. 

It  was  well  on  towards  noon  the  next  day  be- 
fore we  were  on  our  way. 

"It  looks  like  business,"  said  a  young  lady 
feeding  a  pet  donkey,  as  she  saw  us  start. 

"  It  feels  like  it  too,"  said  I,  dolefully,  for  the 
knapsacks  were  no  lighter,  and  our  feet  were 
tender  after  the  sixteen  miles  of  the  day  be- 
fore. 

It  was  two  easy  miles  to  Arrochar,  a  village  of 
white  cottages  and  a  couple  of  inns,  one  with  a 
tap,  the  other  with  a  temperance  sign.  Here  we 
were  ferried  across  Loch  Long  by  a  fisherman  sad 
as  his  native  hills.  It  was  a  wretched  season,  he 
told  us ;  there  were  few  people  about.  On  the 
west  side  of  the  loch,  the  road  was  wild,  and  soon 
turned  up  to  Glencroe.  At  the  lower  end  of  the 
pass,  sheep  browsed  on  the  hill-sides,  and  in  tiny 
fields  men  and  women  were  cutting  grass.  The 
few  cottages  were  new.  But  these  things  we  left 
behind  when  the  road  began  to  wind  upward  in 
short,  sudden  curves.  It  was  shut  in  on  both  sides 
by  mountains;  the  sun  glittered  on  their  sheer 
2 


18  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

precipices  and  overhanging  cliffs  and  on  the  hun- 
dreds of  watercourses  with  which  their  slopes 
were  seamed.  The  way  was  steep,  and  I  thought 
I  should  have  died  before  I  reached  the  top.  At 
the  last  we  made  a  short-cut  up  to  the  stone 
known,  out  of  compliment  to  Wordsworth,  as 
"Rest  and  be  Thankful."  There  may  be  men 
and  women  with  so  much  poetry  in  their  souls, 
that  after  that  stiff  climb  they  will  still  care  to  find 
the  appropriate  lines  in  their  guide-books,  and 
then  have  breath  enough  left  to  repeat  them. 
But  we  were  too  hot  and  tired  to  do  anything  but 
lie  on  the  grass  and,  as  we  rested,  look  down  upon 
and  enjoy  the  wonderful  pictures  away  beyond  and 
below  us. 

In  this  lonely  place  a  little  loch  lies  dark  and 
peaceful  among  the  hills.  Restil,  its  name  is; 
I  do  not  know  what  it  means,  but  it  has  a  pretty 
sound.  Nothing  could  be  more  monotonous, to 
tramp  over  than  the  long  stretch  of  road  which 
follows  Kinglas  Water  almost  to  the  shores  of 
Loch  Fyne.  Our  feet  were  blistered,  and  now 
ached  at  every  step.  Our  shoulders  were  sorely 
strained.  The  things  we  said  are  best  not  writ- 
ten. When  the  coach  from  Inverary  passed  and 
until  it  was  out  of  sight,  we  made  a  feint  of  not 
being  tired.  But  the  rest  of  the  way  we  now 
grew  eloquent  in  abuse,  now  limped  in  gloomy 
silence. 


In  the  Highlands.  19 

It  was  a  mistake  (which  we  afterward  regret- 
ted) going  to 

CAIRNDOW, 

and  I  do  not  know  why  we  made  it,  except  that 
in  mapping  out  our  route  we  had  little  help  from 
Black.  We  had  to  learn  from  experience,  which 
is  but  a  poor  way,  if  you  find  out  your  errors 
when  it  is  too  late  to  mend  them.  We  were  bound 
to  Inverary,  Dr.  Johnson's  next  stopping  -  place. 
At  the  top  of  Glencroe,  we  should  have  turned  to 
our  left  and  walked  down  Hell's  Glen  to  St.  Cath- 
arine's, where  there  is  a  steam  ferry  to  Inverary 
on  the  opposite  shores  of  Loch  Fyne.  As  it  was, 
we  had  turned  to  our  right  and  walked  to  a  point 
almost  at  the  top  of  the  loch  where  there  was  no 
ferry,  and  where  five  miles  lay  between  us  and  St. 
Catharine's.  This  was  the  coach  road  from  Tar- 
bet,  and  the  guide-book  has  but  little  interest  in 
travellers  who  go  afoot.  Though  one  hears  much 
of  walking  tours  in  the  Highlands,  but  few  are 
made.  In  seven  weeks'  walking  we  scarcely  met 
even  a  tramp. 

We  felt  our  mistake  the  more  keenly  because  of 
the  unpleasantness  of  the  inn.  The  landlady  greet- 
ed us  warmly ;  like  the  ferry-man  of  the  morn- 
ing, she  found  there  were  too  few  tourists  abroad. 
But  her  greeting  was  better  than  her  rooms  or  her 
dinner,  and  she  herself  was  unco'  canny. 


20  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

There  was  in  the  inn  a  young  artist  whose  name 
she  told  us.  We  had  never  heard  it,  and  this 
showed  onr  ignorance ;  for  he  came  from  London, 
where  he  had  won  the  first  prize  in  an  exhibition, 
and  his  wife,  who  was  with  him,  had  won  the  sec- 
ond, and  altogether  they  were  very  great,  and  it 
was  small  wonder  they  did  not  care  to  dine  with 
unknown  travellers  who  carried  sketch-books. 
But,  indeed,  I  think  in  no  country  in  the  world  ex- 
cept Great  Britain  will  one  artist  not  be  glad  to 
meet  another  when  chance  throws  them  together. 
An  English  artist  wrecked  on  a  desert  island 
would  not  recognize  a  brother  artist  in  the  same 
plight  as  "  one  of  the  fraternity,"  unless  the  latter 
could  make  good  his  claims  by  the  excellence,  not 
of  his  work,  but  of  his  letters  of  introduction  or 
the  initials  after  his  name.  Nor  does  he  unbend 
in  the  Highlands,  where  Englishmen  of  other 
crafts  become  so  very  sociable. 

When  we  walked  out  after  a  bad  dinner,  the 
eastern  hills  rose  against  the  pale  yellow  light  of 
the  coming  moon.  One  star  sent  a  shining  track 
across  the  dark  water,  over  which  every  now  and 
again  the  wind  marked  its  passage  in  long  lines 
of  silver  ripples.  Of  all  the  sweet  still  evenings 
of  our  journey,  we  shall  always  remember  this  as 
the  sweetest  and  stillest. 

It  was  in  the  morning  that  the  landlady  showed 
her  canniness.  She  sent  us  off  in  her  boat  to  be 


In  the  Highlands. 


23 


rowed  across  the  loch  ;  this,  she  said,  we  should 
find  the  shorter  way  to  Inverary.  But  on  the 
water  one  of  the  boys  let  slip  the  truth.  We 
should  have  half  the  distance  to  walk  if  we  went 
straight  from  Cairndow  to  St.  Catharine's,  there 
to  cross  by  the  steam  ferry.  Judge  of  our  right- 
eous wrath!  "When  they  rowed  us  back  to  the 


INVEIIARY. 


Cairndow  side,  the  boys  were  careful  to  land  us  a 
good  quarter  of  a  mile  below  the  inn.  The  worst 
of  it  was  that  once  on  shore  again,  we  did  not 
know  whom  to  believe,  the  mother  or  the  children. 
We  were  in  a  fine  state  of  doubt,  until  a  woman 
in  the  first  cottage  we  came  to  reassured  us.  This 


24  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

was  by  far  the  shorter  way,  and  we  need  not  hurry, 
she  added ;  we  could  not  help  reaching  St.  Cath- 
arine's in  time  for  the  ferry  at  eleven. 

She  was  right.  It  seemed  a  short  walk  by  the 

loch.  We  stopped  only  once,  that  J might  get 

an  old  ruin  on  the  very  water's  edge.  When  we 
came  to  St.  Catharine's  we  had  an  hour  or  more  to 
sit  at  the  inn  door.  It  was  one  of  those  hot,  misty 
days,  which  are  not  rare  during  the  short  High- 
land summer.  The  mountains  were  shrouded  in 
a  burning  white  haze.  The  loch  was  like  glass. 
On  its  opposite  shore,  Inverary,  white  and  shining, 
was  reflected  in  its  waters ;  and  close  by,  at  the 
foot  of  the  hills,  the  turreted  castle  of  the  Argylls 
stood  out  strongly  against  the  dark  wood. 

Here  we  made  up  our  minds  to  go  to  Dalmally 
by  coach.  It  was  much  too  hot  to  walk.  This 
left  us  free  to  take  a  nearer  look  at  the  castle, 
which,  when  we  saw  how  painfully  it  had  been 
restored,  we  thought  less  fine.  In  the  town  itself, 
though  there  is  plenty  sketchable,  there  is  noth- 
ing notable,  save  the  old  town -cross,  with  its 
weather-worn  carvings,  which  stands  upon  the 
shore,  with  loch  and  hills  for  background. 

After  lunch  at  the  Argyll  Arms,  suddenly  an 
excursion  steamer  and  the  coach  from  Tarbet 
poured  streams  of  tourists  into  the  place.  Two 
more  coaches  dashed  out  from  the  hotel  stables. 
The  wide  street  was  one  mass  of  excursionists 


In  the  Highlands.  25 

and  landlords  and  waiters,  and  coachmen  in  red 
coats  and  gray  beavers,  and  guards  with  bundles 
and  boxes.  There  was  a  short,  sharp  struggle  for 
seats,  and  in  the  confusion  we  came  off  with  the 
best,  and  found  ourselves  on  the  leading  coach, 
whirling  from  the  glare  of  the  loch,  through  the 
cool  shade  of  a  wooded  glen,  to  the  stirring  sounds 
of  the  "  Standards  on  the  Braes  of  Mar,"  shouted 
by  a  party  of  Lowland  Sandies  who  filled  the  other 
seats. 

At  the  first  pause,  the  coachman  pointed  to 
deer  standing  quietly  under  the  graceful  silver 
birches  that  shut  in  the  road. 

"  Shush-sh-sh-sh !"  screamed  the  Sandies,  in  a 
new  chorus. 

"  Why  canna  ye  put  salt  on  their  tails  ?"  cried 
one. 

Though  later,  cows  and  sheep  and  ducks  fled 
before  their  noise,  the  deer  never  stirred.  And 
yet,  I  suppose,  in  the  season  the  Duke  of  Argyll 
and  his  guests  come  stalking  these  tame  creatures, 
and  call  it  sport.* 


*  It  is  for  this  supposition  we  have  already  been  taken  so 
severely  to  task  and  laughed  at  for  our  imagined  ignorance 
of  the  difference  between  roe  deer  and  red  deer.  We  are  glad 
to  have  afforded  the  critics  amusement ;  but  we  have  since 
looked  into  the  matter,  and  a  friend,  a  Highlander  who 
knows  the  Highlands  as  well  as  if  not  better  than  any  of  our 
critics,  assures  us  there  are  red  deer  in  these  woods.  So 
much  for  that  wild  burst  of  criticism !  But  if  this  were  not 


26  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

All  that  afternoon,  through  the  woods  of  Glen- 
aray  and  across  the  purple  moorland  beyond,  afar 
over  the  banks  and  braes  and  streams  around,  there 
rang  out  the  strong  voice  of  Sandy  off  for  a  holi- 
day. Highland  valleys  were  filled  with  the  pathetic 
strains  of 

"We  started  up  a  candy  shop,  John, 

But  couldna  make  it  pay, 
John  Anderson,  my  jo!" 

Highland  hills  re-echoed  the  burden  of  a  loving 
father's  song : 

"For  she's  my  only  daughter, 
Tis  I  myself  that  taught  her 
To  wear  spangled  clothes 
And  twirl  round  on  her  toes, 
And  her  name  it  was  Julia  McXaughter." 

Between  songs  there  were  jokes,  as  at  the  min- 
strels. 

"  Ta-ta,  James ;  au  revore,"  they  called  to  men 
mowing  in  the  meadows. 

"  And  havna  ye  a  letter  for  us  ?"  they  asked  the 
old  woman  at  a  lonely  post-office. 

To  a  beggar  by  the  way-side  they  gave  witti- 
cisms with  their  pennies : 

"  Canna  ye  sing  a  Gaelic  song?" 
"Canna  ye  stand  on  your  head?" 
"He's  a  Grecian!" 

the  case,  our  supposition  would  not  have  been  unnatural 
when  certain  aspects  of  British  sport  are  considered  —  the 
hunting  in  Epping  Forest,  the  performances  of  her  Majesty's 
stag-hounds,  for  example  ! 


Iii  the  Highlands.  27 

If  the  point  of  their  jokes  is  not  very  clear,  the 
fault  is  not  mine  ;  I  am  trying  to  be  not  witty,  but 
realistic. 

There  was  one  in  the  party  —  a  woman,  of 
course — who  remembered  duty. 

"  Isn't  it  bonny  country  ?"  she  kept  asking. 
"And  what's  yon  bonny  glen,  my  laddie?"  and 
she  poked  the  guard. 

"And  Sandy,  mon,  ye're  nae  lookin'  at  the  scen- 
ery," she  said  to  her  husband. 

"Toot,  I  clean  forgot  the  scenery,"  and  Sandy 
broke  off  in  his  singing  to  stare  through  his  field- 
glass  at  a  bare  hill-side. 

Almost  within  sight  of  Loch  Awe  we  came  to 
a  hill  that  was  so  steep  we  all  left  the  coach  and 
walked  a  couple  of  miles  up  the  shadeless  hot 
road.  An  objection  sometimes  made  to  cycling 
is  that  it  is  half  walking ;  but  in  the  Highlands 
you  would  walk  less  if  you  rode  a  cycle  than  if 
you  travelled  by  coach.  From  the  top  of  the  hill 
we  looked  down  to  where,  far  below,  lay  Loch 
Awe  and  its  many  islands.  In  this  high  place, 
with  the  beautiful  broad  outlook,  gypsies  had 
camped.  I  never  yet  knew  the  Romany  who 
did  not  pitch  his  tent  in  the  loveliest  spot  for 
miles  around. 

We  had  no  definite  plan  for  the  night.  We 
left  it  to  chance,  and  we  could  not  have  done 
better.  At  the  station  at  Dalmally  we  said  good- 


28  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

by  to  our  friends,  who  went  gayly  to  another  bon- 
ny glen,  and  we  took  the  train  for  Loch  Awe.  It 
hurried  us  round  the  top  of  the  loch  in  a  few  min- 
utes to  Loch  Awe  station,  where  on  the  platform 
were  crowds  of  men  in  conventional  tweed  knick- 
erbockers and  Norfolk  jackets,  and  women  in  jock- 
ey caps  and  f ore-and-af ts ;  and  moreover,  there  were 
pipers  with  their  pipes  under  their  arms.  From  the 
carriage  window  we  had  seen  the  Loch  Awe  hotel, 
perched  high  on  the  hill-side,  and  looking  down  to 
the  gray  ivy-grown  ruins  of  Kilchurn.  It  seemed 
no  place  for  tourists  who  carried  their  baggage  on 
their  backs.  But  hardly  had  we  left  the  carriage, 
when  up  stepped  an  immaculate  creature  in  blue 
coat  and  brass  buttons  to  tell  us,  with  his  cap  in  his 
hand,  that  our  telegram  had  been  received  and  the 
Port  Sonachan  boat  was  in  waiting.  That  from 
all  that  elegant  crowd  of  travellers  he  should  have 
picked  us  out,  the  only  two  in  the  least  disreputa- 
ble-looking and  travel-worn,  showed,  we  thought, 
his  uncommon  discrimination.  If,  without  know- 
ing it,  we  had  telegraphed  to  a  hotel  of  which 
we  had  never  heard,  if  in  consequence  a  private 
steam-yacht  was  now  at  our  disposal,  why  should 
we  hesitate  ?  Indeed,  we  had  not  time,  for  immedi- 
ately a  sailor  seized  our  shabby  knapsacks  and  car- 
ried them  off  with  as  much  respect  as  if  they  had 
been  Saratoga  trunks.  We  followed  him  into  a 
little  yacht,  which  we  graciously  shared  with  an 


In  the  Highlands. 


29 


Englishman,  his  wife,  two  children,  eleven  bags, 
and  three  bath-tubs. 

The  man  in  the  bine  coat  kindly  kept  his  boat  at 
the  pier  until  J—   -  had  made  quite  a  decent  note 


CROSS   AT   INVERARY. 


of  Kilchurn  Castle.  It  has  its  legends,  but  it  is 
not  for  me  to  tell  them.  Mr.  Hamerton,  who  has 
written  poetry  about  it  and  ought  to  know,  de- 
clares they  are  not  to  be  told  in  prose.  Then  we 
steamed  down  the  loch,  past  the  islands,  one  with 


30  Oar  Journey  to  the  lltbrides. 

a  lonely  graveyard,  another  with  a  large  house; 
past  the  high  mountains  shutting  in  the  Pass  of 
Brander,  to  a  hotel  perfect  of  its  kind.  It  stood 
on  a  little  promontory  of  its  own.  A  bay-window 
in  the  dining-room  commanded  the  view  north, 
south,  and  west  over  the  loch.  As  we  ate  our 
dinner  we  could  watch  the  light  slowly  fade 
and  the  hills  darken  against  it.  The  dinner  was 
excellent,  and  the  people  at  table  were  friendly. 
There  was  a  freedom  about  the  house  that  made 
us  think  of  Dingman's  Ferry  in  its  best  days,  of 
the  Water  Gap  before  its  splendor  came  upon  it, 
of  Bar  Harbor  before  it  was  exploited.  It  was 
not  a  mere  place  of  passage,  like  the  hotels  at 
Tarbet  and  at  Loch  Awe ;  but  those  who  came  to 
it  stayed  for  their  holiday.  All  the  men  were 
there  for  the  fishing,  which  is  good,  and  most  of 
them,  tired  after  their  day's  work,  came  to  dinner 
in  their  fishing  clothes.  Their  common  sport 
made  them  sociable.  They  were  kind  to  us,  but 
in  their  kindness  was  pity  that  we  too  were  not 
fishermen.  The  landlord,  who  was  a  Cameron, 
was  neither  great  nor  obsequious.  He  had  inter- 
est for  this  man's  salmon  and  that  man's  trout, 
and  good  counsel  for  our  journeying.  He  had 
been  game-keeper  for  many  years  on  the  shores 
of  Loch  Awe,  which  he  knew  and  loved.  He 
had  seen  Mr.  Hamerton,  and  his  boats  and  his 
painter's  camp.  Since  we  have  been  to  Loch  Awe 


In  the  Highlands.  33 

we  have  had  an  admiration  for  Mr.  Haraerton 
which  his  book  about  it  never  gave  us.  Seldom 
do  men  show  greater  love  for  beauty  in  their 
choice  of  a  home  than  he  did,  when  he  set  up  his 
tent  on  the  island  of  the  dead.  As  his  books 
show,  he  is  sufficient  unto  himself.  Before  the 
first  mouth  had  ended,  many  might  have  wearied 
for  other  company  save  that  of  the  hills  and  the 
water,  the  dead  and  a  madman. 

We  left  Port  Sonachan  in  the  morning.  Mr. 
Cameron  walked  down  to  his  pier  with  us,  and  a 
Duncan  rowed  us  across  to  South  Port  Sonachan, 
where  there  is  another  hotel,  and  where  we  took 
the  road  to  Loch  Etive.  Again  the  morning  was 
hot  and  misty.  In  the  few  fields  by  the  way 
men  and  women  were  getting  in  the  hay,  and  the 
women,  in  their  white  sacks  and  handkerchiefs 
about  their  heads,  looked  not  unlike  French  peas- 
ants. On  each  hill-top  was  a  group  of  Highland 
cattle,  beautiful  black  and  tawny  creatures,  stand- 
ing and  lying  in  full  relief  against  the  sky.  Two 
miles,  a  little  more  or  less,  brought  us  to  a  village 
wandering  up  and  down  a  weed-grown,  stone-cov- 
ered hill-side.  To  our  left  a-  by-road  climbed  to 
the  top  of  the  hill,  past  the  plain,  bare  kirk,  with 
its  little  graveyard,  and  higher  still  to  two  white 
cottages,  their  thatched  roofs  green  with  a  thick 
growth  of  grass,  and  vines  growing  about  their 
doors,  the  loch  and  the  mountain  in  the  background. 
3 


34  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

But  the  cottages,  which  to  the  right  of  our  road 
straggled  down  to  a  rocky  stream  below,  had  no 
redeeming  whitewash,  no  vines  about  their  doors. 
The  turf  around  them  was  worn  away.  Some 
were  chimneyless ;  on  others  the  thatch,  where 
the  weeds  did  not  hold  it  together,  had  broken 
through,  leaving  great  holes  in  the  roof.  On  a 
bench,  tilted  up  against  the  wall  of  the  lowest  of 
these  cottages,  sat  an  old  gray-haired  man  in  Tarn 
o'  Shanter,  his  head  bent  low,  his  clasped  hands 
falling  between  his  knees.  It  was  a  picturesque 
place,  and  we  camped  out  a  while  under  an  old 
cart  near  the  road-side.  Perhaps  it  would  have 
been  wise  if,  like  Mr.  Hamerton,  we  could  have 
seen  only  the  picturesqueness  of  the  Highland 
clachan,  only  the  color  and  sublimity  of  the  huts, 
only  the  fine  women  who  live  within  them.  But 
how  could  we  sit  there  and  not  see  that  the  pict- 
uresqueness was  that  of  misery,  that  whatever 
color  and  sublimity  there  might  be — and  to  the 
sublimity,  I  must  confess,  we  were  blind — were 
but  outward  signs  of  poverty  and  squalor,  and 
that  the  huts  sheltered  not  only  strong  young 
women,  but  feeble  old  men  like  that  pathetic  fig- 
ure with  the  clasped  hands  and  bent  head?  "We 
have  seen  the  old  age  of  the  poor,  when  we  thought 
it  but  a  peaceful  rest  after  the  work  of  years.  In 
English  almshouses  we  have  found  it  in  our  hearts 
to  envy  the  old  men  and  women  their  homes ;  but 


In  the  Highlands.  35 

here  despair  and  sadness  seemed  the  portion  of 
old  age.  I  do  not  know  why  it  was,  but  as  we 
watched  that  gray-haired  man,  though  there  was 
a  space  of  blue  sky  just  above  him,  and  the  day 
was  warm  and  the  air  sweet,  it  was  of  the  winter 
he  made  us  think  ;  of  the  time  soon  to  come  when 
the  cold  winds  would  roar  through  the  pass,  and 
snow  would  lie  on  the  hills,  and  he  would  shiver 
alone  in  the  chinmeyless  cottage  with  its  one  tiny 
window.  A  few  miles  away,  men  in  a  fortnight 
throw  away  on  their  fishing  more  than  these  peo- 
ple can  make  in  years.  Scotch  landlords  rent 
their  wild,  uncultivated  acres  for  fabulous  sums, 
while  villages  like  this  grow  desolate.  If,  when 
you  are  in  the  Highlands,  you  would  still  see  them 
as  they  are  in  the  stupid  romance  of  Scott  or  in 
the  sickly  sentiment  of  Landseer,  or  as  a  mere 
pleasure-ground  for  tourists  and  sportsmen,  you 
must  get  the  people  out  of  your  mind,  just  as  the 
laird  gets  them  off  his  estate.  Go  everywhere, 
by  stage  and  steamboat,  and  when  you  come  to  a 
clachan  or  to  a  lonely  cottage,  shut  your  eyes  and 
pass  on ;  else  you  must  realize,  as  we  did — and 
more  strongly  as  we  went  farther — that  this  land, 
which  holiday-makers  have  come  to  look  upon  as 
their  own,  is  the  saddest  on  God's  earth. 

Before  we  left  the  shade  of  the  cart  a  little  girl 
went  by,  and  we  asked  her  the  name  of  the  vil- 
lage. 


36  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

"  Kilchrennan,"  she  said,  with  impossible  gut- 
turals, and  then  she  spelled  it  for  us. 

It  was  a  good  sign,  we  thought ;  if  Highland 
children  to-day  are  taught  to  spell,  Highland  men 
and  women  to-morrow  may  learn  to  think,  and 
when  they  learu  to  think,  then,  let  the  landlord 
remember,  they  will  begin  to  act. 

After  Kilchrennan,  the  road  crossed  the  moor- 
land, Ben-Cruachan  towering  far  to  our  right.  At 
the  foot  of  the  one  wooded  hill-side  in  all  this  heath- 
er-clad moor  we  met  with  the  only  adventure  of 
the  morning ;  for  it  was  here  we  espied  in  the  road, 
in  front  of  us,  a  black  bulL  It  fixed  its  horrid 
eyes  upon  us;  its  horns  seemed  to  stretch  from 
one  side  of  the  way  to  the  other.  We  cast  in  our 
minds  whether  to  go  forward  or  through  the  wood, 
but  we  thought  it  best  to  get  the  trees  between 
us,  and  we  fled  up  the  mountain  and  never  stopped 
until  we  had  left  it  a  goodly  space  behind ;  for 
indeed  it  was  the  dreadfnllest  bull  that  ever  we 
saw. 

We  came  to  another  wretched  village  down  by 
Loch  Etive.  Here  again  in  the  sunshine  was  an 
old  man.  He  was  walking  slowly  .and  feebly  up 
and  down,  and  there  was  in  his  face  a  look  as 
if  hope  had  long  gone  from  him.  In  England, 
scarce  a  town  or  village  is  without  its  charities ; 
but  in  the  Highlands,  while  deer  and  grouse  are 
protected  by  law,  men  are  chased  from  their 


In  the  Highlands.  39 

homes,*  the  aged  and  infirm  are  left  to  shift  for 
themselves.  I  think  the  misery  of  these  villages  is 
made  to  seem  but  the  greater  because  of  the  large 
house  which  so  often  stands  close  by.  We  looked 
from  the  weary,  silent  old  man  and  the  row  of  tiny 
bare  cottages,  to  a  gay  young  girl  and  a  young  man 
in  a  kilt,  who  together  strolled  lazily  towards  the 
large  house  just  showing  through  the  trees. 

When  Mr.  Hamerton  wrote  his  "  Painters'  Camp 
in  the  Highlands  "  he  suggested  a  new  route  from 
Oban  to  Ballachulish  by  steamer  up  Loch  Etive, 
and  then  by  coach  through  Glen  Etive  and  Glen- 
coe.  This  is  now  one  of  the  regular  excursions 
from  Oban,  and  one  of  the  finest,  I  think,  in  the 
Highlands.  In  the  glens  we  met  no  fewer  than 
five  coaches,  so  that  I  suppose  the  excursion  is  fair- 
ly popular.  I  wonder  that  Mr.  Hamerton  had  a 
thought  for  the  amusement  of  tourists,  who  are  to 
him  odious,  as  it  seems  necessary  they  should  be 
to  all  right-minded  writers  of  travel.  Now,  he 
might  find  loch  and  glens  less  fine.  For  the  rest 

*  I  have  left  this  sentence  as  it  is,  though  Mr.  William 
Black  was  good  enough  to  attack  us  for  making  such  a  state- 
ment. If  he  has  any  knowledge  whatever  on  the  subject,  he 
must  know  that  it  was  not  until  after  the  trial  in  Edinburgh — 
a  trial  held  a  little  less  than  a  year  ago,  when  these  pages  had 
been  already  set  up  in  type  for  the  MAGAZINE — that  it  was  dis- 
covered that  deer  are  not  protected  by  law  in  the  Highlands. 
Men,  as  I  have  shown  further  on,  cannot  now  be  chased  with- 
out reason  from  their  homes,  fixity  of  tenure  being  the  chief 
good  accomplished  by  the  Crofter's  Act  of  1886. 


450884 


40  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

of  that  day,  being  tourists  ourselves,  we  bore  with 
all  others  patiently. 

"With  Taynuilt  we  left  behind  even  the  sparse 
cultivation  of  the  Highlands.  From  the  boat  we 
saw  that  the  mountain-slopes  were  unbroken  by 
road  or  path ;  there  was  scarce  a  house  in  sight. 
Through  Glen  Etive  the  road  was  very  rough,  the 
mountains  were  barren,  and  not  a  sheep  or  cow 
was  on  the  lower  grassy  hill-sides.  It  was  all  a 
deer  forest,  the  guard  told  us,  and  even  the  Eng- 
lish tourists  in  the  coach  exclaimed  against  the  waste 
of  good  ground.  It  is  well  to  go  first  through 
Glen  Etive.  Bare  as  it  seemed  to  us,  it  was  green 

wjien  compared  to 

GLENCOE, 

where  rocks  lay  on  the  road  and  in  the  stream 
and  on  the  hill-sides.  The  mountains  rose  bare 
and  precipitous  from  their  very  base,  and  trees 
and  grass  found  no  place  to  grow. 

The  guard  gave  us  the  story  of  the  massacre, 
with  additions  and  details  of  his  own  which  I 
have  forgotten.  *At  the  end  of  the  drive  he 
charged  two  shillings — for  his  trouble,  I  suppose. 
People  write  of  the  emotions  roused  by  scenery 
and  associations.  I  think  it  is  afterwards,  by  read- 
ing up  on  the  subject,  that  one  becomes  first  con- 
scious of  them.  However  that  may  be,  of  one  thing 
I  am  certain :  we  have  rarely  been  more  flippant 
than  we  were  on  that  day.  In  Glen  Etive  J dis- 


In  the  Highlands. 


41 


covered  that  Highland  streams,  where  clear  brown- 
ish water  flows  over  a  bed  of  yellow,  green,  and  red 
stones,  look  like  rivers  of  Julienne  soup.  In  the 
high  moor  at  the  head  of  the  Glen  we  were  chief- 
ly concerned  with  a  lunch  of  milk  and  scones  for 
a  shilling,  and  grumblings  over  Highland  extortion. 


LOCH  LEVEN,  FROM  BALLACHULISH. 

In  Glencoe,  guard  and  driver  pointed  out  the  old 
man  of  the  mountain,  who  is  here  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor, and  Ossiari's  Cave,  on  high  in  the  rocky 
wall,  and  stopped  to  show  us  the  Queen's  View. 
But  we  were  more  interested  in  two  cyclers  push- 


42  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

ing  their  machines  up  the  steepest,  stoniest  bit  of 
road ;  in  a  man  in  a  long  black  frock-coat  and  silk 
hat  with  crape  band,  who  carried  an  alpenstock 
with  an  umbrella  strapped  to  it,  and  strode  solemnly 
up  the  pass ;  in  a  species  of  gypsy  van  near  Glen- 
coe  Inn,  in  which,  the  guard  explained,  twelve 
people  and  a  driver  travelled  for  pleasure.  A  girl 
looking  very  pale  and  wrapped  in  shawls  sat  at 
the  inn  door.  The  party  had  stopped  on  her  ac- 
count, he  said ;  the  drive  had  made  her  ill — and 
no  wonder,  we  thought. 

The  stony  pass  led  to  a  pleasant  green  valley, 
from  which  the  road  set  out  over  the  Bridge  of 
Glencoe  for  the  shores  of  Loch  Leven  and 

BALLACHDLI8H. 

Almost  at  once  it  brought  us  to  a  field  overlook- 
ing the  loch,  where,  apparently  for  our  benefit, 
sports  were  being  held. 

The  droning  of  the  pipes  made  quite  a  cheer- 
ful sound,  the  plaids  of  the  men  a  bright  picture ; 
and  when,  two  miles  beyond,  we  found  the  hotel 
with  its  windows  turned  towards  the  loch,  we 
made  up  our  minds  not  to  push  on  to  Oban,  but 
to  stay  and  spend  Sunday  here. 

And  so  we  had  a  second  and  longer  look  at  the 
sports.  Young  men  vaulted  with  poles ;  others, 
in  full  costume,  danced  Highland  flings  and  the 
sword  dance.  Two  pipers  took  turns  in  piping. 


In  the  Highlands.  45 

One  had  tied  gay  green  ribbons  to  his  pipe,  and 
he  fairly  danced  himself  as  he  kept  time  with  his 
foot.  And  while  we  watched  we  heard  but  Gaelic 
spoken.  We  were  in  a  foreign  country. 

The  position  of  the  hotel  was  the  best  thing 
about  it.  At  dinner  an  irate  clergyman  and  his 
daughter  took  fresh  offence  at  every  course,  until, 
when  it  came  to  the  rice -pudding,  they  could 
stand  it  no  longer  and  left  the  table.  "We  were 
less  nice,  and  made  a  hearty  meal ;  but  we  thought 
so  poorly  of  it  that  the  next  day,  which  was  Sun- 
day, we  found  a  lunch  of  bread  and  cheese  and 
beer  more  to  our  taste.  This  we  ate  at  the  inn  in 
Glencoe,  in  company  with  the  clergyman  and  his 
daughter.  They  were  still  sore — why,  I  could  not 
understand — about  the  pudding,  and  the  clergyman 
was  consoling  himself  with  a  glass  of  good  whis- 
key. 

The  following  day  we  came  to 

OBAN — 

the  most  odious  place  in  the  Highlands,  I  have 
heard  it  called ;  the  most  beautiful  place  in  the 
world,  Mr.  William  Black  thinks.  When  the  west 
wind  blows  and  the  sun  shines,  there  is  nothing 

like  it  for  color,  he  told  J .     We  had  to  take 

his  word  for  it.  We  found  an  east  wind  blowing 
and  gray  mist  hanging  over  town  and  bay,  and  we 
could  not  see  the  hills  of  Mull.  When  we  walked 


46  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

out  in  the  late  afternoon,  it  seemed  a  town  of 
hotels  and  photograph  shops,  into  which  excursion 
trains  were  forever  emptying  excursionists  and 
never  carrying  them  away  again.  Crowds  were  on 
the  parapetless,  unsafe  embankment ;  the  bay  was 
covered  with  boats.  In  front  of  the  largest  hotels 
bands  were  playing,  and  one  or  two  of  the  musi- 
cians went  about,  hat  in  hand,  among  the  passers- 
by.  Fancy  Hassler  at  Cape  May  sending  one  of 
his  men  to  beg  for  pennies!  It  was  dull,  for  all 
the  crowd.  The  show  of  gayety  was  as  little  suc- 
cessful as  the  attempt  of  a  shivering  cockney  to 
look  comfortable  in  his  brand-new  kilt. 

Altogether,  Oban  did  not  seem  in  the  least  love- 
ly until  we  could  no  longer  see  it.  But  as  the 
twilight  grew  grayer  and  the  tide  went  out,  the 
great  curve  of  the  embankment  was  marked  by  a 
circle  of  lights  on  shore  and  by  long  waving  lines 
of  gold  in  the  bay.  At  the  pier,  a  steamer,  just 
arrived,  sent  up  heavy  clouds  of  smoke,  black  in 
the  gathering  grayness.  The  boats  one  by  one 
hung  out  their  lights.  Oban  was  at  peace,  though 
tourists  still  walked  and  bands  still  played. 

It  was  gray  and  inexpressibly  dreary  the  next  day 
at  noon,  when  we  took  the  boat  for  Tobermory, 
in  Mull.  Through  a  Scotch  mist  we  watched 
Oban  and  its  picturesque  castle  out  of  sight ; 
through  a  driving  rain  we  looked  forth  on  the 
heights  of  Morven  and  of  Mull.  Sometimes  the 


In  the  Highlands.  47 

clouds  lightened,  and  for  a  minute  the  nearer  hills 
came  out  dark  and  purple  against  a  space  of  whit- 
ish shining  mist ;  but  for  the  most  part  they  hung 
heavy  and  black  over  wastes  of  water  and  wastes 
of  land.  Sir  Walter  Scott  says  that  the  Sound 
of  Mull  is  the  most  striking  scene  in  the  Hebri- 
des ;  it  would  have  been  fair  to  add,  when  storms 
and  mists  give  one  a  chance  to  see  it.  Pleasure 
parties  sat  up  on  deck,  wrapped  in  mackintoshes 
and  huddled  under  umbrellas.  Our  time  was  di- 
vided between  getting  wet  and  drying  off  down- 
stairs. The  excitement  of  the  voyage  was  the 
stopping  of  the  steamer,  now  in  mid -stream  in 
"  Macleod  of  Dare "  fashion,  now  at  rain-soaked 
piers.  Of  all  the  heroes  who  should  be  thought 
of  between  these  two  lands  of  romance,  only  the 
most  modern  was  suggested  to  us,  probably  because 
within  a  few  weeks  we  had  been  re-reading  Mr. 
Black's  novel.  But,  just  as  in  his  pages,  so  in  the 
Sound  of  Mull,  little  boats  came  out  to  meet  the 
steamer.  They  lay  in  wait,  tossing  up  and  down 
on  the  rough  waters  and  manned  with  Hamishes 
and  Donalds.  Into  one  stepped  a  real  Macleod, 
his  collie  at  his  heels ;  into  another,  an  elderly 
lady,  who  was  greeted  most  respectfully  by  the 
Hamish,  as  he  lifted  into  his  boat  trunks  marked 
with  the  name  of  Fleeming  Jenkin.  This  gave  us 
something  to  talk  about ;  when  we  had  last  seen 
the  name  it  was  in  a  publisher's  announcement, 


48  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

which  said  that  Mr.  Stevenson  was  shortly  to  write 
a  biographical  notice  of  the  late  Fleeming  Jenkin. 
At  the  piers,  groups  of  people,  no  better  off  for 
occupation  than  we,  waited  to  see  the  passengers 
land.  We  all  took  unaccountable  interest  in  this 
landing.  At  Salen  there  was  an  intense  moment 
when,  as  the  steamer  started,  a  boy  on  shore  dis- 
covered that  he  had  forgotten  his  bag.  At  the  next 
pier,  where  a  party  of  three  got  off,  as  their  baggage 
was  carried  after  them,  we  even  went  the  length  of 
counting  up  to  forty  bags  and  bundles,  three  dogs, 
and  two  maids.  We  left  them  standing  there, 
surrounded  by  their  property,  with  the  rain  pour- 
ing in  torrents  and  not  a  house  in  sight.  This  is 
the  way  you  take  your  pleasure  in  the  Hebrides. 
We  were  glad  to  see  among  the  boxes  a  case  of 
champagne.  At  the  last  moment,  one  of  the  men, 
from  the  edge  of  the  pier,  waved  a  brown  paper 
parcel,  and  told  the  captain  that  another  like  it  had 
been  left  aboard.  I  am  afraid  he  had  forgotten 
something  else  ;  thence  to  Tobermory  the  captain 
did  but  revile  him. 

TOBERMORY 

is  a  commonplace  town  with  a  semicircle  of  well- 
to-do  houses  on  the  shores  of  a  sheltered  bay.  At 
one  end  of  the  wooded  heights  that  follow  the 
curve  of  the  town  is  a  big  hotel ;  at  the  other, 
Aros  House,  a  brand-new  castle,  in  among  the 


In  the  Highlands.  49 

trees.  The  harbor  is  shut  in  by  a  long,  narrow  isl- 
and, bare  and  flat.  It  seemed  a  place  of  endless  rain 
and  mist.  But  when  we  thought  the  weather  at  its 
worst,  the  landlady  called  it  pleasant,  and  suggested 
a  two  miles'  walk  to  the  light-house  on  the  coast. 
Children  played  on  the  street  as  if  the  sun  shone. 
"VYe  even  saw  fishing  parties  row  out  towards  the 
Sound. 

We  had  to  stay  in  Tobermory  two  interminable 
days,  for  it  was  impossible  at  first  to  find  a  way 
out  of  it.  Our  idea  was  to  walk  along  the  north 
and  then  the  west  coast,  and  so  to  Ulva ;  but  the 
landlady  was  of  the  opinion  that  there  was  no  get- 
ting from  Tobermory  except  by  boat.  Fishermen 
in  the  bar-room  thought  they  had  heard  of  a  rough 
road  around  the  coast,  and  knew  that  on  it  we 
should  find  no  inn.  The  landlord,  to  make  an 
end  of  our  questions,  declared  that  we  must  go  to 
lona  by  the  boat  due  the  next  morning  at  eight. 
This  seemed  the  only  chance  of  escape  unless  we 
were  to  return  to  Oban. 

In  the  mean  time  there  was  nothing  to  do,  noth- 
ing to  see.  The  hotel  windows  looked  out  on  the 
gray,  cheerless  bay,  dotted  with  yachts.  Once  we 
walked  in  the  rain  to  the  light-house,  and  back 
across  the  moors.  The  wind  never  stopped  blow- 
ing a  gale. 

"  If  anybody  wants  to  know  what  Mull's  like  in 
summer,"  said  J ,  in  disgust,  "  all  they've  got 


50  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

to  do  is  to  go  to  a  New  Jersey  pine  barren  when 
an  equinoctial's  on." 

At  our  early  breakfast  the  next  morning,  the 
landlord  told  us  that  it  was  dark  outside  the  bay. 
It  must  have  been  wilder  even  than  he  thought. 
No  boat  for  lona  came. 

It  was  after  this  disappointment  that  J ,  by 

chance,  in  the  post-office,  met  the  Procurator  Fis- 
cal, whatever  he  may  be.  We  have  good  reason 
to  be  grateful  to  him.  He  mapped  out  a  walking 
route  to  Salen,  and  thence  to  Loch-Na-Keal,  at  the 
northern  end  of  which  is  the  island  of  Ulva — the 
soft  Ool-a-va  which  always  leads  the  chorus  of  the 
islands  in  Mr.  Black's  tragedy,  "Macleod  of  Dare." 

We  did  not  care  to  walk  to  Salen  in  the  rain  ; 
we  were  not  willing  to  spend  another  night  in  To- 
bermory.  Therefore,  that  same  afternoon,  when  the 
boat  from  Skye  touched  at  the  pier,  we  got  on 
board.  We  believed  in  the  roughness  of  the  sea 
beyond  the  Sound  when  we  saw  tourists  prostrate 
in  the  cabin,  with  eloquent  indifference  to  looks. 
But  it  was  short  steaming  to 

SALEN, 

where  we  faced  wind  and  rain  to  walk  about  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  to  the  hotel. 

Here,  as  Dr.  Johnson  said  in  Glenelg,  "  of  the 
provisions,  the  negative  catalogue  was  very  copi- 
ous." The  landlady  asked  us  what  we  should  like 


In  the  Highlands.  51 

for  supper;  she  might  have  spared  herself  the 
trouble,  since  she  had  nothing  to  give  us  but  ham 
and  eggs.  However,  we  found  the  outlook  less  de- 
pressing than  at  Tobermory.  There  was  no  com- 
monplace little  town  in  sight,  but  only  bare  roll- 
ing grounds  stretching  to  a  bay,  and  on  the  shores 
the  ruins  of  a  real  old  castle,  of  which  Mr.  Abbey 

once  very  unkindly  made  a  drawing,  so  that  J , 

for  his  own  sake,  thought  it  best  to  let  it  alone. 
There  was,  moreover,  something  to  read.  Lying 
with  the  guide-books  were  the  "  Life  of  Dr.  Nor- 
man Mcleod,"  "  Castle  Dangerous,"  and  the  "  Life 
of  the  Prince  Consort."  J—  -  devoured  them  all 
three,  and  the  next  day  regaled  me  with  choice 
extracts  concerning  the  domestic  virtues  of  the 
royal  family. 

When  we  awoke,  the  clouds  were  breaking. 
Across  the  Sound  of  Mull  they  were  low  on  the 
heights  of  Morven,  but  the  hill-sides  were  green, 
streaked  with  sunshine.  Above  were  long  rifts 
of  blue  sky,  and  in  the  bay  a  little  yacht  rocked 
on  glittering  water.  "We  ate  more  ham  and  eggs, 
and  made  ready  to  begin  our  tramp  at  once. 

Neither  maid  nor  landlord  could  tell  us  if  there 
were  inns  on  the  road  to  Bunessan.  In  Mull  a 
man  knows  but  his  own  immediate  neighborhood. 
In  the  hotels,  the  farthest  explorations  are  to  the 
bed-rooms ;  in  the  cottages  the  spirit  of  enterprise 
is  less.  The  interior  of  the  island  is  an  unknown 


52  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

country.  The  adventurous  traveller  goes  no  far- 
ther inland  than  Tobermory  on  the  east  coast,  or 
Bunessan  on  the  west.  The  ordinary  traveller 
never  goes  ashore  at  all,  but  in  the  boat  from 
Oban  makes  the  tour  of  Mull  in  a  day.  As  a 
consequence,  there  is  no  direct  communication  be- 
tween the  two  sides  of  the  island.  It  is  strange 
that,  though  one  of  the  largest  of  the  Hebrides 
and  within  easiest  reach  of  the  main -land,  Mull 
should  be  one  of  the  least  known  and  civilized. 
It  is  not  even  settled.  People  respect  Dr.  John- 
son because  in  the  days  when  steamboats  were 
not,  and  roads  at  the  best  were  few,  he  made  a 
journey  to  the  islands.  But  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  if  this  respect  is  measured  by  hardships, 
we  are  far  more  worthy  of  it  for  having  followed 
him  to  Mull  a  century  later.  Wherever  he  and 
Boswell  went,  guides  and  horses,  or  boats,  as  the 
case  might  be,  were  at  their  disposal ;  the  doors 
of  all  the  castles  and  large  houses  in  the  islands 
were  thrown  open  to  them.  We  were  our  own 
guides.  It  may  be  said  that  the  steamboat  was  at 
our  service,  but  it  could  not  always  take  us  to 
places  we  wished  to  see.  If  Dr.  Johnson  had  to 
ride  over  moorland  on  a  pony  too  small  for  him, 
he  was  sure  that  when  evening  came  a  Macquarry, 
a  Maclean,  or  a  Macleod  would  be  eager  to  make 
him  welcome.  We  walked  on  roads,  it  is  true,  but 
they  were  bad,  and  not  only  were  we  not  wanted 


In  the  Highlands.  55 

at  the  castles,  but  we  did  not  want  to  go  to  them 
since  they  are  now  mostly  in  ruins ;  there  was 
chance,  too,  of  our  not  coming  to  an  inn  at  night- 
fall. The  inns  of  Mull  are  few  and  far  between. 
Besides,  for  all  one  knows,  those  mentioned  in  the 
guide-book  may  be  closed.  If  others  have  been 
opened,  there  is  no  one  to  tell  you  of  them. 

However,  we  took  the  procurator's  word  for  the 
inn  at  Ulva,  and  started  out  again  with  our  knap- 
sacks, which  seemed  but  heavier  on  our  backs  after 
several  days'  rest.  All  morning  we  tramped  dreary 
miles  of  moor  and  hill,  with  the  wind  in  our  faces, 
and  by  lochs  with  endless  curves,  around  which  we 
had  to  go,  though  we  saw  our1  journey's  end  just 
before  us.  While  we  followed  the  northern  shore 
of  Loch-Na-Keal,  high  Ben -More,  with  its  head 
among  the  clouds,  was  behind  us.  In  front  was 
the  Atlantic,  with  heavy  showers  passing  over  it, 
and  now  blotting  out  far  Staffa  and  the  long  ridge 
of  the  Ross  of  Mull,  an  encircling  shadow  between 
the  ocean  and  the  headland  of  Gribun ;  and  now 
sweeping  across  the  loch  and  the  near  green  island 
of  Inch-Kenneth. 

A  large  house,  with  wide  lawn  and  green  fields 
and  well-clipped  hedges,  just  at  the  head  of  Loch- 
Na-Keal,  and  one  or  two  small  new  cottages  shut 
in  with  flaming  banks  of  fuchsias,  showed  what 
Mull  might  be  if  in  the  island  men  were  held  in 
as  high  account  as  rabbits  and  grouse.  "We  saw  the 


56  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

many  white  tails  of  the  rabbits  in  among  the  ferns, 
and  though  they  live  only  to  be  shot,  on  the  whole 
we  thought  them  better  off  than  the  solemn,  silent 
men  and  women  who  trudged  by  us  towards  Salen, 
where  it  was  market-day,  for  it  is  their  fate  to 
live  only  to  starve  and  suffer.  The  one  man  who 
spoke  to  us  during  that  long  morning  was  a  shep- 
herd, with  a  soft  gentle  voice  and  foreign  Scotch, 
whose  sheep  we  frightened  up  the  hill-side. 

ULVA 

lay  so  close  to  the  shores  of  Mull  as  scarce  to 
seem  a  separate  island.  But  the  waters  of  the  nar- 
row Sound  were  rough.  The  postman,  who  had 
just  been  ferried  over,  held  the  boat  as  we  stepped 
into  it  from  the  slippery  stones  of  the  landing. 
As  he  waited,  he  said  not  a  word.  They  keep 
silence,  these  people,  under  the  yoke  they  have 
borne  for  generations.  The  ferryman  was  away, 
and  the  boy  who  had  come  in  his  place  had  hard 
work  to  row  against  wind  and  waves,  and  harder 
work  to  talk  English.  "  I  beg  pardon,"  was  his 
answer  to  every  question  we  asked. 

The  little  white  inn  was  just  opposite  the  land- 
ing, and  we  went  to  it  at  once,  for  it  was  late  and 
we  were  hungry.  We  asked  the  landlady  if  she 
could  give  us  some  meat. 

"  Of  course,"  she  said  —  and  her  English  was 
fairly  good — she  could  give  us  tea  and  eggs. 


In  the  Highlands.  57 

"  No,  but  meat,"  we  repeated. 

"  Yes,  of  course,"  she  said  again ;  "  tea  and  eggs." 

And  we  kept  on  asking  for  meat,  and  she  kept 
on  promising  us  tea  and  eggs,  and  I  know  not  how 
the  discussion  had  ended,  if  on  a  sudden  it  had  not 
occurred  to  us  that  for  her  the  word  had  none 
other  but  its  Scriptural  meaning. 

While  she  prepared  lunch  we  sat  on  low  rocks 
by  the  boats  drawn  up  high  and  dry  on  the  stony 
beach.  At  the  southern  end  of  the  island  was 
Ulva  House,  white  through  an  opening  in  a  pleas- 
ant wood,  and  surrounded  by  broad  green  past- 
ures. Just  in  front  of  us,  close  to  the  inn,  a  hand- 
ful of  bare  black  cottages  rose  from  the  mud  in 
among  rocks  and  bowlders.  No  paths  led  to  the 
doors ;  nothing  green  grew  about  the  walls.  Wom- 
en with  pinched,  care-worn  faces  came  and  went, 
busy  with  household  work,  and  they  were  silent 
as  the  people  we  had  met  on  the  road.  Beyond 
was  barrenness ;  not  another  tree,  not  another  bit 
of  pasture-land  was  in  sight.  And  yet,  before  the 
people  were  brought  unto  desolation,  almost  all 
the  island  was  green  as  the  meadows  about  the 
laird's  house ;  and  so  it  could  be  again  if  men  were 
but  allowed  to  cultivatf  the  ground.  Where  weeds 
and  rushes  and  ferns  now  cover  the  hills  and  the 
level  places  were  once  fields  of  grain  and  grass. 
To-day  only  the  laird's  crops  are  still  sowed  and 
reaped.  Once  there  could  be  heard  the  many 


68  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

voices  of  men  and  women  and  children  at  work 
or  at  play,  where  now  the  only  sounds  are  the 
roaring  of  the  waters  and  the  crack  of  the  rifle.* 
Of  all  the  many  townships  that  were  scattered 
from  one  end  of  the  island  to  the  other,  there 
remains  but  this  miserable  group  of  cottages.  The 
people  have  been  driven  from  the  land  they  loved, 
and  sent  hither  and  thither,  some  across  the  nar- 
row Sound,  others  far  across  the  broad  Atlantic. 

The  Highlands  and  the  Hebrides  are  lands  of 
romance.  There  is  a  legend  for  almost  every 
step  you  take.  But  the  cruelest  of  these  are  not 
so  cruel  as,  and  none  have  the  pathos  of,  the  tales 
of  their  own  and  their  fathers'  wrongs  and  wretch- 
edness which  the  people  tell  to-day.  The  old 
stories  of  the  battle-field,  and  of  clan  meeting  clan 
in  deadly  duel,  have  given  way  to  stories  of  the 
clearing  of  the  land  that  the  laird  or  the  stranger 
might  have  his  shooting  and  fishing,  as  well  as 
his  crops.  At  first  the  people  could  not  understand 
it.  The  evicted  in  Ulva  went  to  the  laird,  as  they 
would  have  gone  of  old,  and  asked  for  a  new  home. 
And  what  was  his  answer ?  "I  am  not  the  father 
of  your  family."  And  then,  when  frightened 
women  ran  and  hid  themselves  at  his  coming,  he 
broke  the  kettles  they  left  by  the  well,  or  tore  into 

*  This  also  has  been  questioned.  All  we  can  say  is  that 
we  both  saw  and  heard  men  in  Ulva  shooting  with  rifles. 
"What  they  were  shooting  at  we  did  not  go  to  see. 


In  the  Highlands.  61 

shreds  the  clothes  bleaching  on  the  heather.  And 
as  the  people  themselves  have  it,  "in  these  and 
similar  ways  he  succeeded  too  well  in  clearing 
the  island  of  its  once  numerous  inhabitants,  scat- 
tering them  over  the  face  of  the  globe."  There 
must  have  been  cruelty  indeed  before  the  Western 
Islander,  who  once  loved  his  chief  better  than  his 
own  life,  could  tell  such  tales  as  these,  even  in  his 
hunger  and  despair. 

I  know  it  is  pleasanter  to  read  of  bloodshed  in 
the  past  than  of  hunger  in  the  present.  A  lately 
published  book  on  Ireland  has  been  welcomed  by 
critics,  and  I  suppose  by  readers,  because  in  it  is 
no  mention  of  evictions  and  crowbar  brigades  and 
horrors  of  which  newspapers  make  good  capital. 
I  have  never  been  in  Ireland,  and  it  may  be  that 
you  can  travel  there  and  forget  the  people.  But 
in  the  Hebrides  the  human  silence  and  the  desolate 
homes  and  the  almost  unbroken  moorland  would 
let  us,  as  foreigners,  think  of  nothing  else.  Since 
our  return  we  have  read  Scott  and  Mr.  Hamerton 
and  Miss  Gordon  Gumming  and  the  Duke  of 
Argyll,  and  many  others  who  have  helped  to  make 
or  mar  the  romance  and  history  of  the  Highlands. 
But  the  true  story  of  the  Highlands  as  they  are 
I  think  we  learned  for  ourselves  when  we  looked, 
as  we  did  at  Ulva,  from  the  laird's  mansion  to  the 
crofter's  hovel.  It  is  the  story  of  the  tyranny  of 
the  few,  the  slavery  of  the  many,  which  can  be 


62  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

learned  still  more  fully  from  the  reports  of  the 
Royal  Commission,  published  by  the  English  Gov- 
ernment. 

When  we  returned  to  the  inn  we  had  no  thought 
but  to  get  away  at  once,  how,  we  hardly  knew. 
The  landlady  suggested  three  plans.  We  could 
wait  until  the  morrow,  when  the  Gomestra  men,  as 
she,  a  native,  called  them,  and  not  Gometra  men,  as 
Mr.  Black  has  it,  would  row  us  out  to  meet  the 
steamboat  coming  from  lona.  How  "  Macleod  of 
Dare  "  like  this  would  have  been !  We  could  be 
ferried  over  the  Sound,  and  walk  back  by  Loeh- 
Na-Keal,  the  way  we  had  come,  then  around  its 
southern  shores,  and  so  across  to  Loch  Scridain,  at 
the  head  of  which  was  an  inn.  Or  we  could  sail 
across  Loch-Na-Keal,  and  thus  cut  off  many  miles 
of  the  distance  that  lay  between  us  and  our  nexc 
resting-place.  We  must,  however,  decide  at  once  ; 
there  were  two  gentlemen  below  who  would  take 
us  in  their  boat,  but  if  we  did  not  want  them,  they 
must  go  back  to  cut  the  laird's  hay.  Were  we 
willing  to  wait  until  evening,  they  would  take  us 
for  half  price.  The  rain  now  fell  on  the  loch,  but 
we  made  our  bargain  with  the  gentlemen  on  the 
spot. 

The  landlady  gave  our  sailing  quite  the  air  of 
an  adventure.  We  need  not  be  alarmed,  she  said, 
as  indeed  we  had  not  thought  of  being ;  the  only 
danger  was  to  the  gentlemen  coming  home.  We 


In  the  Highlands.  63 

found  them  at  the  landing,  ballasting  the  boat  Avith 
stones  and  getting  on  their  oil-skins.  We  suggest- 
ed that  they  should  take  us  all  the  way  to  Bunessan, 
but  they  would  not  hear  of  it.  Only  the  older  of 
the  two,  an  old  gray-haired  man,  could  speak  Eng- 
lish ;  they  would  not  venture  out  to  sea  in  such 
weather,  he  told  us. 

As  we  sailed  past  the  white  house  we  asked 
him  if  he  had  ever  heard  of  Dr.  Johnson.  He 
shook  his  head  and  then  turned  to  the  other  man, 
and  the  two  began  to  talk  in  Gaelic.  "Toctor 
Shonson,  Toctor  Shonson,"  we  heard  them  say  to 
each  other.  But  they  both  kept  shaking  their 
heads,  and  finally  the  old  man  again  said  they  had 
never  heard  of  him. 

When  the  wind  swept  the  rain  from  the  hills  of 
Ulva,  we  could  see  that  on  the  western  side  of  the 
island  the  strange  basaltic  formation  like  that  of 
Staff  a  begins.  Near  the  low  green  shores  of 
Inch-Kenneth  a  yacht  lay  at  anchor.  It  belonged 
to  one  of  the  lairds  of  Mull,  the  boatman  said. 
The  people,  who  have  barely  enough  to  live  on 
themselves,  can  still  afford  to  support  a  yacht  for 
their  landlord.  How  this  can  be  is  the  real  prob- 
lem of  the  Hebrides.  To  solve  it  is  to  explain  the 
crofter  question  without  the  aid  of  a  Royal  Com- 
mission. 

On  the  Gribun  shore  the  landing-place  was  a 
long  row  of  stones,  slippery  with  wet  sea-weed. 


64  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

The  old  man  gave  me  his  arm  and  led  me  in  safety 
to  the  foot  of  the  meadows  beyond.  He  was  the 
gentleman  the  landlady  had  called  him.  A  French- 
man could  not  have  been  more  polite.  Nor  was 
there  in  his  politeness  the  servility,  which  in  Eng- 
land makes  one  look  to  honest  rudeness  with  re- 
lief. Caste  distinctions  may  be  bitterly  felt  in  the 
homes  of  the  Western  Islanders,  but  in  their  man- 
ner is  something  of  the  equality  which  French 
republicans  love.  They  can  be  courteous  without 
cringing.  Englishmen  call  this  familiarity.  But 
then  the  Englishman  who  understands  true  polite- 
ness is  the  exception. 

It  was,  if  anything,  wetter  on  land  than  it  had 
been  on  the  water.  To  reach  the  road  we  waded 
through  a  broad  meadow  knee-high  in  dripping 
grass.  The  mist  kept  rising  and  falling,  and  one 
minute  we  could  see  the  islands — ITlva  and  Gometra 
and  Inch-Kenneth  and  even  Staffa — and  the  next 
only  grayness.  In  the  narrow  pass  over  the  head- 
land between  Loch-Na-Keal  and  Loch  Scridain  the 
clouds  rolled  slowly  down  the  mountains  on  either 
side,  lower  and  lower,  until  presently  we  were 
walking  through  them.  And  as  we  went,  as  was 
proper  in  the  land  of  Macleod  of  Dare,  a  strange 
thing  happened ;  for  scarcely  had  the  clouds 
closed  about  us  than  a  great  gust  of  wind  swept 
through  the  pass  and  whirled  them  away  for  a 
moment.  Then  the  wind  fell,  and  again  we  were 


In  the  Highlands.  67 

swallowed  np  in  grayness,  and  could  scarcely  see. 
Just  as  we  were  within  sight  of  Loch  Scridain, 
down  poured  torrents  of  rain.  A  little  farther  on 
and  we  were  half-way  up  to  our  knees  in  a  bridge- 
less  stream  that  came  rushing  down  the  mountains 
across  the  road. 

We  passed  two  wind-and-raiu-beaten  villages 
and  occasional  lonely  cottages,  and  the  ruins  of 
others.  Mr.  Hamerton  says  that  nothing  is  more 
lovely  to  an  artist- than  a  Highland  cottage  after 
a  rain ;  but  the  trouble  is,  you  seldom  see  it  after 
the  rain,  for  in  the  Hebrides  the  rain  it  raineth 
every  day  and  always.  We  came,  too,  to  one  big 
dreary  house  and  a  drearier  kirk.  The  rest  of  the 
way  there  was  but  the  wet  wilderness,  with  the 
wet  road  following  the  curves  of  the  loch,  and 
even  striking  a  mile  or  so  inland  to  cross  with 
the  bridge  a  river  which  falls  into  it  at  its  head. 
The  inn  was  on  the  opposite  shore ;  a  short-cut 
lay  across  the  water ;  there  were  boats  moored  to 
the  northern  bank  where  we  walked,  but  not  a 
ferryman  to  be  found.  A  woman  in  a  clean  white 
cap,  who  stood  in  a  cottage  door-way,  did  not  even 
know  if  there  was  a  ferry. 

Towards  evening  the  rain  stopped ;  the  light  of 
the  setting  sun  shone  on  the  hills  before  us  as  it 
seldom  does  except  in  pictures  of  the  Hebrides ; 
but  on  a  walking  tour  when  the  chance  for  pleas- 
ure comes,  one's  capacity  for  enjoyment  has  gone. 


68  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

At  the  end  of  a  day's  tramp  one  can  see  little 
beauty,  save  that  of  a  good  dinner  and  a  soft  bed, 
both  of  which  are  the  exception  in  the  Hebrides. 

The  inn  at 

KINLOCH 

was  a  two-storied  cottage,  with  kitchen  full  of 
women  and  tap-room  full  of  geese  and  hens  below 
stairs,  dining  and  sleeping  rooms  above.  The  bed- 
rooms were  all  occupied — by  the  family,  I  suppose, 
since  we  were  given  our  choice ;  but  after  choos- 
ing, everything  had  to  be  moved  out  before  we 
could  move  in.  However,  we  made  a  shift  to 
change  our  shoes  and  stockings,  and  in  the  dining- 
room  we  crouched  over  a  big  fire,  while  the  steam 
rose  in  clouds  from  our  soaked  tweeds.  The  land- 
lady came  up  at  once  with  whiskey  and  glasses. 

"And  will  you  accept  a  glass  from  me?"  she 
asked. 

This  was  the  Highland  hospitality  of  which  one 
reads,  and  it  was  more  to  our  taste  than  the  whis- 
key. 

For  supper  of  course  we  had  ham  and  eggs,  but 
it  took  no  less  than  two  hours  for  the  landlady  to 
cook  them  and  to  set  the  table.  She  was  the  sis- 
ter of  the  landlady  at  Ulva,  she  told  us.  "And  it's 
a  good  house  my  sister  keeps  whatever,"  she  said  ; 
and  then  she  wanted  to  know,  "  Had  the  wee  lad- 
die, Donald,  ferried  us  over?  And  we  had  come 
from  Salen,  and  were  we  going  to  Bunessan  ?  It 


In  the  Highlands.  69 

will  be  twelve  miles  to  Bunessan  whatever.  And 
then  to  lona  ?"  It  will  be  a  great  kirk  we  should 
see  there,  she  had  heard ;  but  she  had  never  been 
to  lona.  She  spoke  excellent  English,  with  the 
soft,  drawling  accent  we  thought  so  pleasant  to 
hear,  and  we  wished  she  could  cook  as  well  as  she 
talked. 

While  we  waited,  J ,  out  of  sympathy,  fed  a 

lean  hound  on  meat-lozenges.  He  looked  so  starved 
that  we  could  but  hope  each  would  prove  for  him 
the  substantial  meal  it  is  said  to  be  on  the  label  of 
the  box,  and  which  we  had  not  yet  found  it. 

After  supper  it  was  two  hours  more  before  the 
bedroom  was  ready,  and  I  think  we  had  rarely 
been  so  tired.  We  sat  nodding  over  the  fire,  sick 
with  sleep.  When  we  could  stand  it  no  longer, 
we  made  a  raid  upon  the  room  while  the  land- 
lady, who  spent  most  of  her  time  on  the  stairs, 
was  on  her  hundredth  pilgrimage  below,  and  locked 
ourselves  in.  After  that,  she  kept  coming  back 
with  towels  and  one  thing  and  another  until  we 
were  in  bed  and  asleep. 

We  had  ordered  more  ham  and  eggs  for  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  asked  to  be  awakened 
at  seven.  We  might  have  spared  ourselves  the 
trouble — no  one  called  us.  It  was  half-past  nine 
before  breakfast  was  on  the  table,  and  it  would  not 

have  been  served  then  had  not  J gone  into  the 

kitchen  to  see  it  cooked.  The  only  difference  be- 
5* 


70  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

tween  our  morning  and  evening  meal  was  in  the 
bill,  where,  according  to  island  reckoning,  tea  and 
ham  and  eggs  called  supper,  are  worth  sixpence 
more  than  eggs  and  ham  and  tea  called  breakfast. 
At  the  last  moment  up  came  the  landlady,  again 
with  whiskey  and  glasses. 

"And  will  you  accept  a  glass  from  me?" 
But  indeed  we  could  not.  To  begin  a  twelve 
miles'  walk  with  whiskey  was  out  of  the  question. 
"We  afterwards  learned  that  this  was  but  good 
form  on  her  part.  The  true  Highlander  always 
expects  to  drink  a  wee  drappie  with  the  coming 
and  the  parting  guest.  It  would  have  been  true 
politeness  for  us  to  accept.  However,  we  did  not 
know  it  at  the  time,  and  the  whiskey  was  bad. 
She  seemed  hurt  by  our  refusal.  I  thought  her 
a  shade  less  cordial  when  we  came  to  say  good- 

by- 

The  wind  was  still  blowing  a  gale,  but  it  drove 
the  clouds  beyond  the  bald  mountains  towards  Ben- 
More,  and  brought  no  showers  with  it.  Every- 
thing had  grown  bright  with  the  morning  but 
the  cottages,  and  they,  perhaps  because  of  the  con- 
trast with  the  blue  loveliness  of  water  and  sky  and 
hills,  seemed  darker  and  more  desolate  than  in 
the  rain.  Here  and  there  along  the  loch  a  few 
were  gathered  in  melancholy  groups,  pathless  and 
chimneyless,  smoke  pouring  from  door-ways  and 
through  holes  in  the  walls,  mud  at  the  very  thresh- 


Iii  the  Highlands.  71 

olds.  For  every  cottage  standing  there  was  an- 
other in  ruins.  On  the  top  of  a  low  hill,  over 
which  we  made  a  short-cut,  was  a  deserted  village, 
conveniently  out  of  sight  of  the  road.  Xo  trav- 
eller, unless  he  chanced  upon  it  as  we  did,  would 
know  of  it.  It  was  not  high  enough  or  far  enough 
from  other  cottages  for  the  shielings  upon  which 
the  Duke  of  Argyll  thinks  so  much  false  senti- 
ment has  been  wasted.  We  found  a  few  black- 
faced  sheep  in  possession  of  the  ruins,  and  before 
them,  I  fear,  have  been  driven  not  merely  cattle 
from  summer  pastures,  but  men  from  their  only 
homes.  There  were  several  school-houses  between 
Kinloch  arid  Bunessan,  and  we  half  hoped  that 
these  were  in  a  measure  responsible  for  roofless 
walls  and  desolate  hearths.  But  the  truth  is,  the 
Duke  of  Argyll  and  other  landlords  of  Mull  find 
it  less  trouble  to  collect  rents  from  a  few  large 
tenants  than  from  many  small  ones,  and  to  suit 
their  convenience  the  people  have  had  to  go.  It 
is  their  land ;  why  should  they  not  do  with  it  as 
they  think  best  ? 

Almost  all  this  Ross  of  Mull,  on  which  we  now 
were,  belongs  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  the  defender 
of  Scotland  as  it  was  and  as  it  is ;  and  I  think 
in  all  the  Hebrides  there  is  no  place  more  deso- 
late. "We  saw  perhaps  more  signs  of  bitter  pov- 
erty in  Skye  and  in  Barra.  But  in  these  islands 
the  evicted  have  settled  again  upon  the  crofts  of 


72  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

their  friends  or  relations.  Often  it  is  because  the 
many  are  thus  forced  to  live  upon  land  that  can 
scarce  support  the  few  that  all  are  so  poor.  But 
the  Islander  loves  his  home  as  he  once  loved  his 
chief,  and  now  hates  his  landlord,  and  he  must  be 
in  extremity  indeed  before  he  will  go  from  it. 
Knowing  this,  you  feel  the  greatness  of  the  mis- 
ery in  the  Ross  of  Mull,  from  which  the  people 
have  flown  as  if  from  a  plague -stricken  land. 
The  greater  part  of  it  is  silent  and  barren  as  the 
desert.  We  walked  for  miles,  seeing  no  living 
things  save  a  mere  handful  of  sheep  grazing  on 
the  hills,  and  the  white  sea-gulls  perched  on  the 
low  sea -weed  covered  rocks  of  Loch  Scridain. 
And  beyond  the  barren  waste  of  land  was  the  sea 
without  a  sail  upon  its  waters,  and  the  lonely  isl- 
ands, which  we  knew  were  no  less  desolate.  The 
cruel  climate  of  this  far  northern  country  has  had 
little  to  do  with  the  people's  flight.  Neither,  in- 
deed, has  natural  barrenness.  The  soil  in  the 
Highlands  is  not  naturally  barren,  the  Duke  of 
Argyll  himself  has  said.  The  few  large  farms  by 
the  way  were  good  proof  of  what  might  be,  even 
in  the  rocky  Ross  of  Mull. 

It  seemed  odd  in  the  midst  of  the  wilderness  to 
meet  two  peddlers  loaded  with  gay  gilt  frames. 
They  thought  it  a  "blowy"  day,  and  so  did  a  man 
who  passed  soon  after  in  a  dog-cart.  But  the 
women  in  clean  white  caps  whom  we  met  on  the 


In  the  Highlands.  73 

road  could  answer  our  questions  only  in  streams 
of  Gaelic. 

We  saw  no  one  else  but  men  and  women  get- 
ting in  the  harvest,  or  bending  beneath  great  bur- 
dens of  sea-weed  as  they  toiled  up  the  hill  from 
the  shores  of  the  loch.  There  was  a  lonely  grave- 
yard by  the  way ;  but  nowhere  does  death  seem 
so  great  a  blessing  as  we  thought  it  must  be  here. 

It  was  a  long  twelve  miles,  and  the  knapsacks 
were  growing  heavier  with  each  day.  But  we 
were  walking  for  our  lunch ;  there  were  no  inns 
on  our  road.  For  one  reason  or  another,  to  me  it 
was  our  hardest  day's  work.  I  think  I  must  have 

starved  had  not  J slung .  my  knapsack  on 

his  already  heavily  laden  shoulders.  At  the  last, 

BUNESSAN 

came  as  a  surprise.  We  were  looking  sadly  at  the 
endless  line  of  road  over  the  moors  in  front  of  us, 
when  we  turned  a  corner,  and  there  was  the  little 
white  town,  with  a  pleasant  inn,  close  to  the  waters 
of  Loch  Slach. 

We  had  to  wait — we  were  growing  used  to 
waiting — for  our  lunch ;  but  at  last  when  it  came 
it  seemed  a  banquet.  We  were  not  asked  to  eat 
either  ham  or  eggs.  Altogether,  we  were  so  well 
pleased  that  we  brought  the  day's  walk  to  an  end. 
But  it  seemed  that  the  maid  who  came  to  the  door 
was  less  pleased  with  us.  Our  knapsacks,  too  large 


74  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

for  comfort,  were  too  small  for  respectability. 
Our  clothes  were  weather-worn.  The  landlord 
bade  her  show  us  to  a  bedroom ;  but  before  we 
had  finished  our  lunch  she  had  locked  every  door 
in  the  house,  carefully  leaving  the  keys  on  the 
outer  side,  and,  in  her  zeal,  locking  one  man  in. 
This,  however,  we  did  not  learn  until  later,  when 
English  people  staying  in  the  inn  told  us  what 
suspicious  characters  we  were.  They  said  she  was 
stupid,  which  we  had  already  found  out  for  our- 
selves. 

Bunessan  is  the  show-place  of  the  Ross  of  Mull ; 
steamers  occasionally  land  at  a  pier  on  the  loch, 
two  miles  distant.  Tourists  come  to  the  inn  for 
the  fishing.  If  they  go  no  farther  into  the  island, 
they  probably  carry  away  with  them  impressions 
of  well-to-do  people  and  benevolent  landlords — the 
impressions,  probably,  the  Duke  of  Argyll  wishes  to 
produce.  After  Kilpatrick  and  the  other  wretched 
groups  of  cottages  we  had  passed  in  the  morning, 
it  did  indeed  seem  happy  and  prosperous.  It  may 
be  that  we  should  have  been  less  struck  with  it  and 
its  inn  had  it  not  been  for  the  things  we  had  already 
seen  and  experienced.  Certainly,  at  dinner,  dishes 
which  we  thought  luxuries  were  found  fault  with 
by  the  rest  of  the  company.  But  then  they  had 
their  own  opinion  of  Bunessan.  They  had  taken  it 
on  trust,  after  hearing  it  praised ;  but  no  sooner  had 
they  come  than  they  wished  themselves  away  again. 


In  the  Highlands.  75 

One  suggested  that  friends  should  be  induced  to  stay 
for  a  summer  and  educate  the  place,  which  might 
thus  be  made  bearable  for  them  in  the  future ; 
but  the  others  would  not  hear  of  it — one  trial 
was  quite  enough.  We  were  all  very  confidential 
about  our  plans,  and  took  pleasure  in  mutually  dis- 
couraging each  other.  J and  I  were  foolish, 

they  said,  to  go  to  lona,  where  the  cathedral  was  so 
insignificant  that  from  the  steamer  they  mistook  it 
for  the  parish  church.  We,  on  our  side,  declared  it 
worse  than  folly  for  them  to  go  from  Bunessan  to 
Tobermory,  the  dreariest  spot  in  all  the  dreariness 
of  Mull.  In  the  end  we  agreed  that  our  coming  to 
the  island  was  a  mistake,  and  that  no  one  but  Mr. 
Black  could  have  a  good  word  to  say  for  it.  Some- 
how, we  made  it  seem — and  it  was  a  comfort  to 
find  some  one  else  to  abuse — as  if  he  had  brought 
us  here  under  false  pretences.  But,  indeed,  who- 
ever thinks  to  find  Mull  as  it  is  described  in 
"  Macleod  of  Dare "  cannot  but  be  disappointed. 
Castle  Dare  must  have  been  not  very  far  from 
Bunessan,  on  the  Ross  of  Mull.  It  was  to  this  very 
inn  Lady  Macleod  wished  to  send  Gertrude  White 
and  her  father ;  and  when  you  have  seen  the  home 
of  the  Macleods  for  yourself,  you  would  have,  like 
Mr.  Black,  no  mercy  for  Sir  Keith,  but  you  would 
spare  his  sweetheart. 

The  fact  is,  Mr.  Black's  descriptions  are  mis- 
leading, though  I   must  admit  that   even   as  we 


76  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

found  fault  with  him,  one  of  his  strange  things 
happened ;  for,  far  out  beyond  the  loch  and  its 
purple  hills  we  saw  Staffa,  and  the  sea  below  and 
the  sky  above  it,  turned  to  gold  as  the  sun  sank 
into  the  Atlantic.  But  then,  as  a  rule,  the  things 
that  happen  in  Mull  are  less  strange  than  disagree- 
able. For  one  evening's  loveliness,  you  must  put 
up  with  hours  of  cold  and  damp  discomfort.  Of 
course,  if  you  own  a  castle  or  a  yacht,  you  can  im- 
prove your  point  of  view. 

In  the  morning  after  this  beautiful  sunset,  the 
wind  blew  the  rain  through  the  window  in  gusts 
over  our  toilet  -  table.  Again  no  one  called  us. 
The  morning  hours  of  the  Hebrides  are  even  later 
than  those  of  London,  which  we  had  hitherto  sup- 
posed the  latest  in  the  working  world.  When  we 
went  down-stairs  there  were  cups  and  saucers  and 
plates  on  the  breakfast  -  table,  but  nothing  else ; 
when  we  asked  for  our  bill  the  maid  said  we  should 
have  it  in  a  wee  bittee,  which  we  knew  to  mean 

long  hours,  and  J ,  as  at  Kinloch,  took  matters 

into  his  own  hands. 

For  the  first  time  we  felt  our  superiority  as  we 
shouldered  our  knapsacks.  Because  of  the  early 
rain  and  wind,  the  other  people  in  the  inn  had 
given  up  the  boat  to  Tobermory.  Already,  break- 
fast over,  the  rain  stopped  and  clouds  grew  light. 
We  were  on  our  way  to  lona  while  they  still  made 
plans  to  follow  us  with  their  babies  and  bundles. 


In  the  Highlands.  79 

The  road  lay  for  six  miles  over  the  moors. 
There  were  two  or  three  large  houses  with  culti- 
vated fields,  a  few  black  dreary  cottages,  and  the 
ruins  of  others.  But  this  end  of  the  Ross  of  Mull 
was  mostly,  as  when  David  Balfour  walked  across 
it,  bog  and  brier  and  big  stones.  The  coast  was 
all  rock,  great  piles  of  red  granite  jutting  out  in 
uneven  masses  into  the  sound  that  separates  lona 
from  the  Ross.  When  we  reached  it  the  ferry- 
man had  just  come  and  gone.  It  was  the  llth  of 
August,  and  men  with  guns,  in  readiness  for  the 
morrow,  were  getting  into  a  dog-cart,  its  horses' 
heads  turned  towards  Bunessan.  Two  fishermen, 
in  a  boat  filled  with  lobster  nets,  rowed  to  the  tiny 
landing.  We  asked  them  to  take  us  across,  but 
with  a  word  they  refused.  There  was  nothing  to 
do  but  to  sit  on  the  rocks  and  wait,  in  fear  lest  the 
party  from  Bunessan,  with  their  children  and  end- 
less boxes  and  bundles — thirteen,  one  man  told  us 
he  had — should  overtake  us  and  give  us  and  our 
knapsacks  no  chance  in  the  inns  of  lona. 

Wind  and  rain  blew  in  our  faces.  The  fisher- 
men made  off  in  their  little  boat,  hugging  the 
rocky  shore.  Above  us,  on  the  granite,  were  two 
cottages,  no  less  naked  and  cold.  Across  the  Sound 
we  looked  to  a  little  white  town  low  on  the  wind- 
swept water,  and  to  a  towered  cathedral  dark  against 
the  gray-green  rocks.  A  steamer  had  just  brought 
Cook's  daily  pilgrims  to  St.  Columba's  shrine. 


ON  THE   ISLANDS. 

ALL  things  come  to  those  who  wait,  even  the 
ferry-men  of  the  Hebrides ;  but  the  steamer  had 
carried  the  pilgrims  far  from  St.  Columba's  Island 
towards  Staffa  before  the  little  ferry-boat  sailed 
with  the  wind,  round  the  rocks,  into  the  tiny  bay 
by  the  landing.  One  passenger  was  put  out,  and  a 
woman  ran  down  from  the  black  cottages  for  a 
bundle  done  up  in  a  handkerchief,  from  which,  as 
she  took  it,  fell  out  broken  pieces  of  bread  and 
meat.  Unconsciously,  these  people  are  always  re- 
minding you  of  their  poverty. 

There  was  no  sailing  in  the  teeth  of  the  wind. 
The  ferry-man  and  a  small  boy  with  him  rowed, 
keeping  under  the  shelter  of  the  rocks  as  far  as 
possible.  At  first  both  were  silent.  But  we  were 
fast  learning  that  this  silence  is  not  the  stupidity  or 
surliness  which  the  stranger  in  the  islands  is  apt  to 
think  it.  It  comes  rather  of  the  sadness  which  has 
been  the  "Western  Islander's  inheritance  for  gener- 
ations, and  of  his  shyness  in  speaking  the  foreign 
Scotch  —  that  is,  if  he  can  speak  it  at  all  —  for 
which  he  is  so  often  laughed  at.  Once  you  break 


84  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides, 

through  the  silence,  and  show  the  people  that  you 
do  not  look  upon  them  as  children  or  as  slaves, 
they  are  friendly  enough. 

All  this  part  of  the  Ross  of  Mull,  as  far  as  we 
could  see,  belonged  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  our 
ferry-man  said.  There  had  been  trouble  here  as  in 
Tiree,  and  the  Commission  was  coming  in  a  week. 
He  had  only  his  house  and  his  boat.  Five  shillings 
and  sixpence  a  year  he  paid  ;  it  was  not  much,  but 
it  was  about  the  land  there  was  trouble,  and  he  had 
no  land.  We  might  have  agreed  with  him  and 
thought  his  rent  no  great  thing,  had  we  not  seen 
his  bare  cottage,  stranded  on  the  bare  rocks,  proba- 
bly built  by  himself  or  by  his  father  before  him. 
As  it  was,  it  seemed  to  us,  if  there  was  any  ques- 
tion of  payment,  it  should  have  been  the  other 
way. 

Our  stay  in  lona  was  the  one  perfect  part  of  our 
journey.  In  the  first  place,  we  were  free  to  wander 
where  and  how  we  chose  without  thought  of  long 
miles  to  be  walked  before  nightfall,  and,  better  still, 
without  our  knapsacks,  which  we  left  in  the  inn. 
It  was  no  small  surprise  to  learn  that  we  had  our 
choice  of  three  hotels.  After  careful  study  of 
"  Macleod  of  Dare,"  we  rather  expected  to  be 
stranded  on  an  almost  uninhabited  island.  "We  can 
now  recommend  Mr.  Black,  on  his  next  visit,  to  try 
the  very  excellent  house  at  which  we  stayed.  This 
was  St.  Columba's  Inn.  "We  went  to  it,  not  so  much 


On  the  Islands. 


85 


to  do  honor  to  the  saint  as  because  it  was  the  big- 
gest in  the  place,  the  nearest  to  the  cathedral,  and 
commanded  the  finest  view. 

Southward,  it  looked  to  the  broken  walls  of  the 
nunnery  rising  high  above  house  roofs  and  chim- 
neys, and  farther  to  a  sweep  of  water,  and  farther 


IN  THE  TRANSEPT  OF  THE  CATHEDRAL,  IONA. 

still  to  the  Ross  of  Mull,  the  low  black  rock  of  Er- 
raid,  the  isle  Mr.  Stevenson  has  made  famous,  at 
its  far  end.  In  the  distance,  shadowy  islands  lay 
over  the  gray  sea.  To  the  north  was  the  cathedral 
and  the  ruined  monastery. 

The  inn  was  quite  full,  but  the  landlady  prom- 


86  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

ised  us  a  room  in  the  manse,  a  short  way  down  the 
road. 

lona  is  the  show-place  by  which  we  fancied  the 
Duke  of  Argyll  must  hope  -to  answer  the  question, 
once  in  a  great  while  asked,  about  misery,  terror- 
ism, extortion,  rent,  in  the  Hebrides.  Strangers 
come  to  the  islands  only  to  fish  or  to  shoot.  It  is 
the  exception  when,  as  at  lona,  there  are  sights  to 
be  seen.  They  have  time  to  give  only  a  glance  to 
the  Islander  and  his  home.  In  lona  this  home 
seems  decent  enough  ;  if  you  stop  to  ask  the  Island- 
er what  he  thinks,  however,  I  doubt  if  it  will  be 
praise  alone  you  will  hear  of  his  model  landlord. 
Above  the  stony  beach,  where  boats  lie  among  the 
rocks,  is  the  village  street,  lined  with  white  cot- 
tages ;  and  beyond,  fields  of  tall  grain  and  good 
pasture  slope  upward  to  the  foot  of  the  low  green 
hills,  whose  highest  peak  rises  to  the  north  of  the 
village,  a  background  for  the  cathedral.  Many  of 
the  cottages  are  new,  others  are  whitewashed  into 
comparative  cheerfulness.  The  crops  on  the  lower 
ground,  the  sheep  and  cattle  on  the  hills,  are  pleas- 
anter  to  see  in  an  island  where  men  live  than  end- 
less wastes  of  heather.  In  lona  the  civilization  of 
the  monks  of  the  Dark  Ages  has  survived  even  the 
modern  sportsman. 

It  is  the  fashion  among  writers  of  guide  and 
other  books  about  lona  to  call  it  a  desolate,  lonely 
little  isle.  That  it  is  little  I  admit ;  but  you  must 


On  the,  Islands.  89 

go  to  the  other  side  of  the  Sound  for  the  loneliness 
and  desolation.  In  proportion  to  its  size,  it  seemed 
to  us  the  most  cultivated  island  of  the  Hebrides.  I 
have  heard  it  argued  that  for  the  Duke  of  Argyll 
not  to  forfeit  his  ownership  was  a  true  charity  to  his 
tenants,  as  if  lona  was  still  the  desert  St.  Colurnba 
found  it.  But  I  think  its  rental  would  be  found  a 
fair  return  for  the  charity  of  a  landlord.  As  for  the 
favorite  myth  that  lona  is  far  out  in  the  Hebridean 
Sea,  I  hardly  know  how  it  could  have  arisen,  since 
the  island  is  within  easy  reach  of  the  main-land  and 
of  Mull.  There  is  no  history  of  its  old  monastery 
that  does  not  tell  how  the  pilgrim  coming  to  it 
from  the  Ross  of  Mull  had  but  to  call  a  summons 
from  the  granite  rocks,  and  the  monks  would  hear 
the  cry  and  make  ready  to  meet  him  in  their  boats. 
If  this  be  true,  however,  his  voice  must  have  been 
phenomenal.  The  modern  pilgrim  could  no  more 
do  this  than  he  could  wield  the  long  sword  or 
pull  the  cross-bow  of  men  of  old.  In  our  time  a 
steamer  comes  to  lona  every  day  from  Oban,  and 
twice  a  week  another  stops  on  its  way  to  and 
from  Glasgow  and  the  Outer  Hebrides.  If  lona 
lay  so  near  American  shores  it  would  long  since 
have  become  a  Bar  Harbor  or  a  Campo  Bello.  Even 
where  it  is  it  has  its  crowds  of  visitors.  The  writ- 
er who  on  one  page  tells  you  of  its  loneliness,  on 
the  next  mourns  its  daily  desecration  when  tourists 
eat  sandwiches  among  the  ruins. 


90 


Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 


These  ruins,  like  everything  else  in  lona,  belong 
to  the  Dnke  of  Argyll.  They  are  kept  locked 
except  when  the  keeper  of  the  keys  opens  them 
to  sight-seers.  It  may  interest  his  Grace  to  know 
that  we  trespassed,  climbing  over  the  low  stone 


TOMB  OF  MACLEOD. 

walls  into  the  cathedral  enclosure.  While  we  were 
there  we  were  alone,  save  for  black  sheep,  the 
modern  successors  of  the  monks.  It  is  a  fact  that 
as  we  stood  with  our  feet  upon  Macleod  of  Mac- 
leod's  tomb,  one  of  the  black  sheep — probably  the 
very  same  which  frightened  Gertrude  White  in 


On  the  Islands.  91 

the  moonlight  —  baaed  at  us.  But  the  sun  was 
shining,  and  we  did  not  screech ;  we  merely  said 
shoo  to  it,  and  remarked  upon  its  impudence. 

If  our  piety,  with  Dr.  Johnson's,  did  not  grow 
warmer  among  the  ruins  of  lona,  at  least  our  way 
of  seeing  them  was  not  unlike  Boswell's.  Perhaps 
this  is  why  we  think  he  showed  more  common- 
sense  in  lona  than  elsewhere  on  his  journey.  He 
did  not  trouble  to  investigate  minutely,  he  says, 
"  but  only  to  receive  the  general  impression  of  sol- 
emn antiquity,  and  the  particular  ideas  of  such 
objects  as  should  of  themselves  strike  my  atten- 
tion." But  indeed,  unless  you  have  a  lifetime  to 
spend  in  lona,  unless  you  are  an  architect  or  an 
archaeologist,  there  is  little  need  to  care  where  the 
exact  site  of  infirmary  or  refectory  or  library 
may  be,  or  to  whom  this  shrine  was  set  up,  that 
tombstone  laid,  or  in  what  year  walls  were  built, 
windows  opened.  It  is  enough  to  see  how  beauti- 
ful the  monks  could  make  the  holy  place  they 
loved,  here  on  this  rough  northern  coast,  as  in 
among  the  vineyards  and  olives  of  the  south,  as 
in  English  fenland  and  wooded  valley. 

But  if  Boswell's  impression  was  one  of  disap- 
pointment, ours  was  one  of  wonder  to  find  the  ruins 
so  much  more  perfect  than  we  had  expected,  and  so 
beautiful,  not  only  with  the  beauty  of  impressive- 
ness  as  a  whole,  but  with  a  grace  and  refinement 
of  detail  one  does  not  look  for  in  the  far  north. 


92  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

Much  early  Italian  work  is  not  more  graceful 
than  the  carving  on  the  capitals,  the  tracery  in  the 
windows,  the  door-way  leading  into  the  sacristy, 
the  arches  that  spring  from  the  cloister  walls  to 
their  outer  arcade  in  the  monastery  and  church 
founded  by  St.  Colurnba.  If,  as  has  been  said,  no 
ivy  covers  the  walls,  when  we  were  there  yellow 
flowers  had  pushed  their  way  between  the  stones, 
while  windows  and  rounded  arches  made  a  frame- 
work for  the  unbroken  blue  of  sea  and  sky  and 
pale  distant  hills.  For  so  long  as  we  were  in  the 
cathedral,  the  sun  shone  as  if,  instead  of  Hebridean 
seas,  the  Mediterranean  lay  beyond.  True,  this  did 
not  last  half  a  morning ;  it  rained  before  night ; 
but  the  very  breaks  in  the  sunshine,  and  the  way 
the  clouds  came  and  went,  made  the  day  more 
beautiful. 

It  is  strange  to  see  this  wonderful  work  of  other 
days  in  an  island  where,  owing  to  their  present 
masters,  men  can  now  scarce  support  existence. 
Centuries  of  progress  or  deterioration — which  is 
it  ?  —  lie  between  the  cathedral,  lovely  even  in 
ruin,  and  the  new  ugly  kirk  close  by.  And  yet 
when  men  had  time  to  make  their  world  beautiful 
the  harvest  was  as  rich.  There  was  enough  to 
eat  and  to  spare  for  the  stranger  when  the  Celtic 
knots  and  twists  were  first  carved  on  the  cross 
standing  by  the  cathedral  door  and  looking  sea- 
ward, and  on  the  tombs  lying  within  the  chancel. 


On  the  Islands.  93 

But,  and  more's  the  pity,  the  same  cannot  be  said 
to-day,  when  tombs  are  crumbling,  and  pale  green 
lichens  cover  the  carving  of  the  cross.  You  feel 
this  contrast  between  past  and  present  still  more 
in  the  graveyard  by  St.  Oran's  chapel,  into  which 
also  we  made  our  way  over  a  stone  wall.  The 
long  grass  has  been  cleared  from  the  gray  slabs, 
where  lie  the  mitred  bishops  and  the  men  in 
armor,  or  where  the  intricacy  of  the  Celtic  de- 
signs makes  space  for  a  ship  with  its  sails  spread. 
They  are  "only  gravestones  flat  on  the  earth,"  as 
Boswell  says,  and  now  neatly  placed  in  senseless 
rows  for  the  benefit  of  the  tourist.  But  who 
would  exchange  them  for  the  well-polished  gran- 
ite obelisks  of  the  modern  stone-cutter  which  rise 
at  their  side  ? 

The  old  road  leads  from  the  cathedral,  past 
McLean's  weather-worn  cross  —  which  is  so  thin 
you  wonder  that  it  still  withstands  the  strong  winds 
from  the  sea — to  the  nuns'  convent,  whose  ruins  and 
tombs  show  it  to  have  been  only  less  fine  than  the 
monastery.  Here  the  gate  was  thrown  open.  A 
small  steam-yacht,  which  we  could  see  lying  at 
anchor  in  the  Sound  below,  had  just  let  loose  a 
dozen  yachtsmen  upon  the  loneliness  of  lona,  and 
they  were  being  personally  conducted  through  the 
nunnery. 

We  trespassed  no  more,  except  in  fields  on  the 
western  side  of  the  island,  whither  we  walked  by 


94  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

the  very  road,  for  all  I  know,  along  which  St.  Co- 
lumba  was  carried  in  the  hour  before  death,  that 
he  might  once  more  see  the  monks  working  on 
the  land  he  had  reclaimed,  and  there  give  them 
his  last  blessing.  But  if  we  trespassed,  no  one  ob- 
jected. The  men  whom  we  met  greeted  us  in 
Gaelic,  which,  when  they  saw  we  did  not  under- 
stand, they  translated  into  a  pleasant  good-day  or 
directions  about  our  path. 

There  were  many  other  places  we  should  have 
seen.  But  since  the  whole  island  was  a  proof  of 
St.  Coliimba's  wisdom  in  settling  on  it,  nothing 
was  to  be  gained  by  a  visit  to  the  particular  spot 
where  he  landed  or  where  he  set  up  a  cairn. 
And  as  for  the  Spouting  Cave,  we  took  the  guide- 
book's word  for  it ;  for  as  Dr.  Johnson  would  say, 
we  were  never  much  elevated  by  the  expectation 
of  any  cave.  Instead  of  sight-seeing,  we  stayed 
on  the  western  shore,  looking  out  beyond  the  low 
white  and  grass-grown  sand-dunes  and  the  bowl- 
der-made beach  to  the  sea,  with  its  many  rocky 
isles,  the  fear  of  seamen,  black  upon  the  waters. 
It  is  just  such  a  coast  as  Mr.  Stevenson  has  de- 
scribed in  his  "  Merry  Men."  And,  indeed,  since 
I  have  written  this  I  have  read  in  his  "  Memoirs 
of  an  Islet "  that  it  is  this  very  coast,  though  more 
to  the  south  of  lona,  where  the  Christ-anna  and 
the  Covenant  went  down  to  the  bottom,  there  to 
rot  with  the  Espirito  Santo  and  her  share  of  the 


On  the  Islands.  95 

treasures  of  the  Invincible  Armada.  When  Co- 
lumba  sailed  from  Ireland  to  Hebridean  seas  the 
Merry  Men  had  long  since  begun  their  bonny 
dance,  for  they  are  as  old  as  the  rocks  against 
which  they  dash,  and  these  rocks  are  older  than 
man.  When  you  know  the  dangers  of  this  coast 
you  have  no  little  respect  for  the  saint  who  dared 
them.  St.  Columba  and  his  disciples,  who  set  up 
cross  and  bell  on  lonely  St.  Kilda  and  the  far 
Faroe  Islands,  were  the  Stanleys  and  Burtons  of 
their  time. 

People  who  have  never  heard  of  crofters  and 
their  troubles  can  tell  you  all  about  St.  Columba 
and  his  miracles.  In  lona  he  interested  us  chiefly 
because  all  that  is  left  of  his  and  his  followers' 
work  gives  the  lie  to  modern  landlords.  Land  in 
the  Hebrides,  they  say,  is  only  tit  for  deer  and 
grouse.  St.  Columba  showed  that  it  could  be 
made  fit  for  man  as  well. 

The  landlady  of  St.  Columba's  Inn  is  true  to 
the  traditions  of  the  island.  She  is  as  unwilling 
to  turn  the  stranger  from  her  door  as  were  the 
abbots  of  St.  Columba's  monastery.  In  her  own 
way  she  performs  miracles  and  finds  room  for  ev- 
ery one  who  comes.  At  first  we  thought  that  her 
miracles  were  worked  at  our  expense.  During  our 
absence  the  party  from  Bunessan  had  arrived.  Al- 
though their  boxes  were  on  the  rocks  of  the  Ross 
of  Mull,  awaiting  the  ferry-man's  convenience,  by 


96  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

their  very  numbers  they  had  gained  the  advantage 
we  feared,  and  had  quietly  stepped  into  the  room 
in  the  manse,  of  which  we  had  neglected  to  take 
possession.  We  were  now  quartered  in  the  school- 
house.  However,  to  judge  from  our  comfort  there, 
we  lost  nothing  by  the  change. 

It  was  at  the  late  supper  that  we  enjoyed  the 
"dairy  produce"  of  which  Miss  Gordon  Gumming 
writes  with  rapture.  It  was  a  simple  meal,  such 
as  one  might  have  shared  with  St.  Columba  him- 
self. The  breakfasts  and  dinners,  I  should  add, 
were  less  saintly,  and  therefore  more  substantial. 
As  for  the  rest  of  the  island,  the  fare  is  regulated 
by  poverty  and  the  Duke.  We  make  a  great  to- 
do  at  home  over  the  prohibition  question,  but  in  the 
Highlands  they  manage  these  matters  more  easily. 
Ducal  option,  we  were  told,  reigns  throughout  the 
island.  And  yet  the  people  of  lona  are  not  grate- 
ful for  thus  being  spared  the  trouble  of  deciding 
for  themselves  upon  a  subject  whereon  so  few 
men  agree.  It  has  been  whispered  that  drunken- 
ness is  not  unknown  in  the  Blessed  Isle,  and  that 
natives  have  been  seen  by  strangers — oh,  the  scan- 
dal of  it ! — reeling  under  the  very  shadow  of  the 
cathedral. 

A  white-haired  clergyman,  with  pleasant  old- 
fashioned  manners  and  Gladstone  collar,  presided 
at  supper.  He  introduced  us  at  once  to  his  fam- 
ily. "  My  son  " — and  he  waved  his  hand  towards 


On  the  Islands.  97 

a  youth  we  had  seen  crossing  the  fields  with  his 
color-box — "  my  son  is  an  artist ;  he  is  studying 
in  the  Royal  Academy.  He  has  already  sold  a 
picture  for  forty  pounds.  Not  a  bad  beginning, 
is  it  ?  And  my  daughter,"  and  he  lowered  his 
voice  deferentially,  "will  soon  be  in  the  hands  of 
the  critics.  She  has  just  made  some  wonderfully 
clever  illustrations  for  an  old  poem  that  hit  her 
fancy !" 

It  was  pleasant  to  see  his  fatherly  pride.  For 
his  sake  we  could  have  wished  her  in  an  easier 
position. 

Evidently,  when  you  have  exhausted  saintly  gos- 
sip in  lona  you  are  at  the  end  of  your  resources. 
The  clergyman  and  two  or  three  others  with  him 
were  as  eager  to  hear  where  we  had  been  and 
where  we  were  going  and  what  we  had  seen,  as  if 
they  had  had  nothing  to  talk  about  for  a  fortnight. 
We  had  decided  to  take  the  Dunara  Castle  from 
Glasgow,  and  in  it  to  steam  to  Coll  and  Tiree  and 
the  Long  Island.  We  had  heard  of  the  steamer, 
as  you  hear  of  everything  in  the  Hebrides,  by 
chance.  And  now  the  old  man  was  all  for  having 
us  change  our  minds.  Here  we  were,  safe  in  lona, 
he  said ;  why  should  we  brave  the  dangers  of  the 
wild  coast  ?  Another  man  thought  we  had  better 
not  go  to  Harris ;  he  had  arrived  there  one  Satur- 
day evening,  intending  to  remain  two  weeks ;  but 
the  midges  would  give  him  no  peace,  and  he  had 
7 


98  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

left  with  the  steamer  on  Monday  morning.  The 
only  comfort  he  could  give  was  that  they  would 
feed  us  well  on  the  Dunara  Cattle.  It  is  strange 
that  in  Scotland,  no  matter  what  your  plans  may 
be,  your  fellow-tourists  are  sure  to  fall  foul  of  them. 

It  was  after  this  the  clergyman  brought  out  of 
his  pocket  a  handful  of  the  new  coins,  which  we 
had  not  then  seen. 

"  It's  an  ugly  face,"  said  J ,  thinking  only 

of  the  coin,  though  it  would  have  been  no  libel 
had  he  referred  to  her  gracious  Majesty  herself. 

But  the  clergyman  was  down  upon  him  at  once. 
"  I  cannot  let  any  one  speak  disrespectfully  of  my 
queen  in  my  presence,"  he  cried  ;  "  I  love  her  too 
dearly  to  hear  a  word  against  her." 

And  he  told  us  how,  that  afternoon,  he  had 
climbed  to  the  top  of  the  highest  hill  in  lona; 
and  standing  where  Columba  had  stood  so  many 
hundreds  of  years  ago,  and  remembering  that  this 
was  the  Jubilee  year  of  his  beloved  sovereign,  he 
dropped  a  new  shilling  into  the  cairn  which  marks 
the  spot  where  the  monks  first  made  their  home. 

And  yet  I  have  a  friend  who,  in  the  pages  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  has  tried  to  prove  that  senti- 
ment is  fast  decaying. 

Later,  when  this  same  sentimentalist  told  us  of 
the  poverty,  hunger,  and  misery  in  lona,  we 
thought  that  the  shilling  might  have  been  dropped 
to  better  purpose. 


On  the  Islands.  99 

It  was  on  a  gray  morning  that  an  old  Hamisli 
rowed  us  and  two  other  passengers  and  a  load  of 

freight  to  the 

"DUNARA  CASTLE," 

which  had  dropped  anchor  in  the  middle  of  the 
Sound.  On  deck  we  found  four  young  sportsmen 
in  knickerbockers  and  ulsters,  their  backs  turned 
upon  the  cathedral,  firing  at  sea-gulls  and  missing 
them  very  successfully.  In  fact,  I  might  as  well 
say  here,  they  kept  on  firing  and  missing  so  long 
as  they  were  on  the  steamer.  A  man  with  a  wife, 
four  children,  three  maids,  and  a  deckful  of  bag- 
gage, was  already  preparing  to  get  off  at  Bunessan. 
The  domestic  energy  of  the  Englishman  is  only 
less  admirable  than  his  business-like  methods  of 
pleasure.  A  party  of  Lowlanders  were  playing 
cards.  A  man  of  universal  authority  was  telling  a 
small  group  of  listeners  all  about  the  geology  and 
religion,  the  fishing  and  agriculture,  of  the  islands. 
But  as  we  sat  in  a  corner,  sheltered  from  the  bit- 
ter cold  wind,  the  talk  that  came  to  us  was  mostly 
of  sport. 

"  I  played  that  brute  for  half  an  hour !" 
"  I  was  fishing  with  a  worm,  I  think." 
"The  best  thing  for  shooting  rooks  is  an  air- 
gun." 

"  He  wasn't  a  particularly  good  shot." 
And   all  the   time  the   brave  sportsmen   kept 
showing  us  what  particularly  bad  shots  they  were. 


100  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

Is  Tartarin's  Chasse  de  Casquettes  really  so  much 
funnier  than  what  is  called  sport  in  England  ? 

Suddenly  one  of  the  Scotchmen,  leaving  his 
cards  to  look  about  him,  gave  the  talk  an  unex- 
pected literary  turn.  "  That  feller,  Louis  Stev- 
verson,"  he  said,  "laid  one  o'  the  scenes  o'  his 
Keednopped  here,"  and  he  pointed  to  the  Ross 
and  Erraid. 

"  Woo's  'e  'C '  said  a  cockney. 

"  'Arts  is  trumps,"  announced  a  third,  and  liter- 
ature was  dropped  for  more  engrossing  themes. 

Emerson  was  right.  It  would  be  a  waste  of 
time  for  the  literary  man  to  play  the  swell.  Even 
the  handsome  and  gentlemanly  authors  of  Boston, 
who  are  praised  by  Arlo  Bates,  when  they  become 
known  to  the  world  at  large  may  be  but  "  fellers !" 

From  the  Sound  we  steamed  past  the  great 
headland  of  Gribun,  with  the  caves  in  its  dark 
rocks,  and  into  Loch  Slach  to  the  pier  near  Bunes- 
san.  The  sportsmen  were  the  first  to  alight,  and, 
with  guns  over  their  shoulders,  they  disappeared 
quickly  up  the  hill-side.  The  father  of  the  family, 
like  a  modern  Noah,  stood  on  the  pier  to  count 
his  wife,  children,  maid,  boxes,  bundles,  fishing- 
rods,  and  gun-cases,  and  to  see  them  safely  on  dry 
land.  It  was  fortunate  for  the  original  Noah  that 
he  did  not  have  a  whole  ship's  company  to  fee 
when  he  left  the  Ark.  We  were  some  time  put- 
ting off  and  taking  on  freight.  At  the  last  mo- 


On  the  Islands.  101 

ment,  back  ran  the  four  sportsmen,  bearing  one 
bird  in  triumph.  They  parted  with  it  sadly  and 
tenderly.  It  was  pathetic  to  see  their  regret  after 
they  had  given  it  to  a  fisherman,  who  seemed  em- 
barrassed by  the  gift.  I  think  they  knew  that  it 
was  the  last  bird  they  would  bring  down  that  day. 

Then  again  we  steamed  past  Gribun.  Beyond 
it  rose  Inch-Kenneth  and  Ulva,  really  "  Ulva  dark" 
this  morning.  And  one  by  one  we  left  behind 
us,  lona,  its  white  sands  shining,  its  cathedral 
standing  out  boldly  against  the  sky ;  Staffa,  for  a 
time  so  near  that  we  could  see  the  entrance  to  the 
great  cave  with  its  clustered  piers ;  Fladda,  Lunga, 
and  the  Dutchman's  Cap.  It  was  a  page  from 
"  Macleod  of  Dare."  And  what  were  the  Dim 
Harteach  men  saying  now?  we  could  not  help 
asking.  Everywhere  we  looked  were  tiny  name- 
less islands  and  bits  of  rock,  sometimes  sepa- 
Vated  only  by  a  narrow  channel.  And  now  the 
snn  shone  upon  us  in  our  corner  and  made  us 
warm.  And  even  after  the  hills  of  Mull  had  be- 
gun to  go  down  on  the  horizon,  and  lona  and  Staffa 
had  faded  into  vague  shadows,  we  could  see  the 
Dutchman,  like  a  great  Phrygian  cap  set  upon  the 
waters. 

Straight  out  we  went  to  Tiree,  a  long,  treeless 

strip  of  land  with  low  hills  at  one  end,  and  a  wide, 

sandy,  Jersey-like  beach.     A  few  houses,  scattered 

here  and  there,  were  in  sight.     There  was  no  pier. 

7* 


102  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

A  large  boat,  with  three  men  at  eacli  of  the  four 
long  oars,  came  out  to  meet  the  steamer,  and  into 
it  were  tumbled  pell-mell  men  and  women,  and 
tables,  and  bags  of  meal,  and  loaves  of  bread,  and 
boxes.  It  is  another  of  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  isl- 
ands. Looking  at  it  from  the  steamship  point  of 
view,  one  could  not  but  wonder  if  as  much  good 
might  not  be  done  for  people,  whose  only  highway 
is  the  ocean,  by  the  building  of  a  pier  as  by  prohi- 
bition laws  enforced  by  a  landlord.  As  in  lona, 
so  in  Tiree,  no  spirits  can  be  bought  or  sold.  It 
is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  paternal  government  that 
the  men  made  children  turn  upon  their  kind  fa- 
therly ruler.  The  crofters  of  Tiree  have  given 
trouble  even  as  have  those  of  Skye  and  Lewis. 
They  are  shielded  from  drunkenness,  and  yet  they 
complain  that  they  have  been  turned  from  the 
land  that  once  was  theirs  to  cultivate,  and  that 
their  rents  have  been  for  long  years  so  high  that 
to  pay  them  meant  starvation  for  their  families. 
Though  these  complaints  are  explained  by  the 
Duke  as  "phenomena  of  suggestion"  to  the  Com- 
missioners, part  at  least  seemed  well  founded  on 
fact.  Instead  of  £1251  18*.  according  to  his  own 
estimate,  his  Grace,  according  to  that  of  the  Com- 
'  mission,  is  now  entitled  to  but  £922  10s.  from  the 
island  of  Tiree. 

We  had  not  time  to  land,  but  steaming  past  its 
miserable  shores,  it  seemed   dreary  enough.     St. 


On  the  Islands.  105 

Columba  showed  what  he  thought  of  it  when  he 
sent  penitents  there  to  test  their  sincerity.  The 
island  of  Coll,  to  which  Dr.  Johnson  and  Boswell 
were  carried  in  a  storm,  was  as  flat  and  stupid  and 
dreary.  We  had  come  as  far  as  Coll,  partly  be- 
cause of  the  Doctor's  visit.  But  from  this  time 
until  we  left  the  Hebrides  we  were  so  much  taken 
up  with  what  we  saw  as  scarce  to  give  him  another 
thought.  For  a  while  we  went  many  miles  astray 
from  his  route. 

When  you  steam  from  Tiree  and  Coll,  a  broad 
stretch  of  the  Atlantic  lies  between  you  and  the 
Long  Island.  If  I  had  my  choice,  I  would  rather 
cross  the  Channel  from  Newhaven  to  Dieppe,  and 
that  is  saying  the  worst  that  can  be  said.  The 
sunshine  for  the  day  came  to  an  end.  It  was 
cruelly  cold.  The  sportsmen  fell  prone  upon  the 
deck,  and  the  intervals  between  their  now  languid 
shots  were  long.  The  man  of  authority  shut  him- 
self up  in  his  state-room,  the  best  on  the  steamer. 
The  card-players  sat  sad  and  silent.  We,  for  our 
part,  could  only  think  of  our  folly  in  coming,  and 
wonder  if  we  too  must  be  sick.  Surely  walking 
could  not  be  greater  misery  than  this.  Though  in 
these  seas  you  are  never  quite  out  of  sight  of  land, 
and  never  clear  of  the  big  and  little  rocks  cropping 
up  all  around  you,  it  was  not  until  late  in  the  after- 
noon that  we  came  again  close  to  large  islands. 
They  were  wild  and  desolate,  with  hardly  a  house 


106  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

and  but  few  cattle  and  sheep  on  their  rocky  shores. 
One  or  two  boats,  with  brown  sails  raised,  were 
jumping  and  pitching  over  the  waves. 

The  gray  wretchedness  of  the  afternoon  was  a 
fit  prelude  to  Barra.  When  we  came  to  Castle 
Bay,  rain  was  falling  upon  its  waters,  on  the  bat- 
tlemented  castle  perched  upon  a  rocky,  sea-weed- 
covered  islet,  and  on  the  town,  set  against  a  back- 
ground of  high  bare  hills.  But  the  steamer  stopped, 
and  we  went  ashore  to  look  about  us.  A  few  ugly 
new  houses,  shops  with  plate-glass  windows,  often 
cited  as  proofs  of  the  island's  prosperity,  and  then 
the  real  Barra:  a  group  of  black  cottages — com- 
pared to  which  those  of  Mull  were  mansions,  those 
of  Kilchrennan  palaces — running  up  and  down  the 
rocky  hill-side.  Only  by  a  polite  figure  of  speech 
can  the  stone  pile  in  which  the  Hebridean  crofter 
makes  his  home  be  called  a  cottage.  It  is,  as  it 
was  described  many  years  ago,  but  "  a  heavy 
thatched  roof  thrown  over  a  few  rudely  put  to- 
gether stones."  The  long  low  walls  are  built  of 
loose  stones  blackened  by  constant  rain.  The 
thatched  roof,  almost  as  black,  is  held  in  place 
without  by  a  net-work  of  ropes,  within  by  rafters 
of  drift-wood.  The  crofter  has  no  wood  save  that 
which  the  sea  yields,  and  yet  in  some  districts  he 
must  pay  for  picking  up  the  beams  and  spars 
washed  up  on  his  wild  shores,  just  as  he  must  for 
the  grass  and  heather  he  cuts  from  the  wilder 


On  the  Islands.  107 

moorland  when  he  makes  his  roof.  Not  until  you 
come  close  to  the  rough  stone  heap  can  you  see 
that  it  is  a  house,  with  an  opening  for  door-way, 
one  tiny  hole  for  window.  From  a  distance  there 
is  but  its  smoke  to  distinguish  it  from  the  rocks 

o 

strewn  around  it. 

At  Castle  Bay,  where  many  of  these  "scenes 
of  misery,"  as  Pennant  called  them  one  hundred 
years  ago,  were  grouped  together,  there  was  not 
even  the  pretence  of  a  street,  but  just  the  rock, 
rough,  ragged,  and  broken,  as  God  made  it.  The 
people  who  live  here  are  almost  all  fishermen,  and, 
as  if  in  token  of  their  calling,  they  have  fashioned 
the  thatch  of  their  roofs  into  the  shape  of  boats ; 
one  cottage,  indeed,  is  topped  with  a  genuine  boat. 
There  were  a  few  chimneys,  but  smoke  came  pour- 
ing from  the  doors,  from  holes  in  the  thatch  and 
walls.  Many  of  the  roofs  bore  a  luxuriant  growth 
of  grass,  with  here  and  there  a  clump  of  daisies  or 
of  the  yellow  flowers  which  give  color  to  High- 
land roads.  But  this  was  all  the  green  we  saw  on 
their  hill-side  of  rock  and  mud. 

Through  open  door-ways  we  had  glimpses  of 
dark,  gloomy  interiors,  dense  with  smoke.  We 
did  not  cross  a  threshold,  however;  to  seek  ad- 
mittance seemed  not  unlike  making  a  show  of  the 
people's  misery.  The  women  and  girls  who  passed 
in  and  out,  and  stood  to  stare  at  us,  looked  strong 
and  healthy.  Theirs  is  a  life  which  must  either  kill 


108  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

or  harden.  Many  were  handsome,  with  strangely 
foreign,  gypsy-like  faces,  and  so  were  the  bonnet- 
ed men  at  work  on  the  pier.  It  may  be  that  there 
is  truth  in  the  story  which  gives  a  touch  of  Span- 
ish blood  to  the  people  of  the  Outer  Hebrides. 
If  the  ships  of  the  Armada  went  down  with  all 
their  treasure,  it  is  said  that  their  crews  survived, 
and  lived  and  took  unto  themselves  wives  in  the 
islands,  from  which  chance  of  deliverance  was 
small.  We  heard  only  Gaelic  spoken  while  we 
were  at  Castle  Bay.  The  people  of  Great  Brit- 
ain need  not  go  abroad  in  search  of  foreign  parts ; 
but  an  Englishman  who  only  wants  to  see  the 
misery  and  wrongs  of  nations  foreign  in  name  as 
well  as  in  reality,  would  find  little  pleasure  in 
Barra. 

When  we  left  the  steamer  the  four  sportsmen 
were  getting  off  with  their  baggage,  of  which  there 
was  no  small  quantity.  When  we  returned,  hours 
later,  they  were  getting  in  again.  The  one  hotel 
in  Barra  was  full.  For  consolation,  I  suppose, 
they  shut  themselves  up  in  their  state-room,  and 
changed  their  trousers  for  the  third  time  that  day. 

Their  return  brought  to  an  end  our  bargaining 
for  their  state-room.  The  night  in  the  ladies' 
cabin  was  one  long  nightmare.  The  steamer 
pitched  and  tossed  as  if  she  were  still  crossing  the 
open  Atlantic.  At  the  many  stopping-places  there 
was  a  great  noise  of  loading  and  unloading.  At 


On  the  Islands.  Ill 

midnight  a  mother,  with  her  two  babies  and  nurse, 
came  to  fill  the  unoccupied  berths. 

J ,  in  the  saloon,  fared  little  better.    But  the 

advantage  of  the  restless  night  was  that  it  sent  us 
up  on  deck  in  time  to  see  the  eastern  hills  grow 
purple  against  the  golden  light  of  coming  day. 
As  in  the  evening,  there  was  still  land  on  either 
side.  All  the  morning  we  went  in  and  out  of 
lochs  and  bays,  and  through  sounds,  and  between 
islands.  Indeed,  I  know  of  no  better  description 
of  the  Outer  Hebrides  than  the  quotation  given 
in  the  guide-book:  "The  sea  here  is  all  islands 
and  the  land  all  lakes."  And  the  farther  north 
we  went,  the  drearier  seemed  this  land — a  fitting 
scene  for  the  tragedy  enacted  on  it,  which,  though 
now  many  years  old,  is  ever  young  in  the  memory 
of  the  people  ;  for  it  was  here  in  Uist  that,  in 
1851,  men  and  women  were  hunted  like  beasts, 
tracked  by  dogs  to  the  caves  and  wilds  where 
they  lay  in  hiding,  bound  hand  and  foot,  and  cast 
upon  ships  waiting  to  carry  them  against  their 
will  across  the  Atlantic.  We  might  have  thought 
that  no  life  had  been  left  upon  the  islands  but  for 
an  occasional  wire  fence,  a  sprinkling  of  sheep  on 
the  greener  hill-sides,  and  lonely  cottages,  with  thin 
clouds  of  blue  peat-smoke  hovering  over  them  to 
show  that  they  were  not  mere  rocks.  Once,  stretch- 
ing across  the  wilderness  we  saw  telegraph  poles 
following  the  coast -line.  It  is  wise  to  let  them 


J12  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

make  the  best  showing  possible.  Some  of  the 
islands  are  cut  off  telegraphically  from  the  rest 
of  the  world. 

We  stopped  often.  At  many  of  the  landings 
not  a  house  was  to  be  seen.  As  a  rule,  there  was 
no  pier.  The  steamer  would  give  her  shrill  whis- 
tle, and  as  it  was  re-echoed  from  the  dreary  hills 
huge  black  boats  came  sailing  out  to  meet  us.  In- 
stead of  boats  waiting  for  the  steamer,  as  in  the 
Mississippi,  here  she  waited  for  them.  And  when 
they  had  dropped  their  sails,  and  rounded  her  bows 
and  brought  up  alongside  her  lower  deck,  there  tum- 
bled into  them  men  and  women,  and  loaves,  and  old 
newspapers,  and  ham  bones,  and  bits  of  meat,  for  in 
the  islands  there  are  always  people  on  the  verge  of 
starvation. 

At  Loch  Maddy,  in  North  Uist,  the  brave  war- 
riors left  us,  and  other  sportsmen  in  ulsters  and 
knickerbockers,  and  with  many  fishing-rods,  came 
to  take  their  place.  On  shore  stood  a  man  in 
plain,  unassuming  kilt,  in  which  he  looked  at  home. 
We  liked  to  fancy  him  a  laird  of  Uist  in  ancestral 
dress,  and  not  like  the  youth  at  Oban,  a  mere  mas- 
querader.  We  asked  the  purser  who  he  was. 

"  Oh,  that  is  Mr.  O'Brien,  of  Liverpool,"  was  his 
answer. 

Everybody  had  come  up  on  deck,  for  the  day 
was  comparatively  fine.  It  kept  clearing  and 
clouding,  the  sun  now  shining  on  the  far  hills 


On  the  Islands.  115 

and  the  rain  pouring  upon  us ;  but  again  the 
showers  were  swept  landward,  and  we  were  in 
sunshine.  As  we  neared 


HAKEIS, 


a  little  old  lady  came  bustling  up.  When  the 
steamer  stopped  in  the  Sound  the  men  in  the  boats 
all  touched  their  bonnets  to  her,  a  few  even  got 
on  board  to  speak  to  her.  She  was  better  than 
a  guide-book,  and  told  the  passengers  near  her  all 
about  Harris.  She  explained  the  difficulties  of 
the  channel  through  the  Sound,  which,  like  all 
Hebridean  waters,  is  full  of  islands  and  rocks  hid- 
den at  high  tide,  and  is  unprotected  by  lights.  She 
pointed  out  Kodil  Church,  whose  gray  tower  just 
showed  above  the  green  hills.  She  always  called 
this  bit  of  Harris  the  Switzerland  of  the  Hebrides, 
she  said.  And  with  its  checker-board-like  patches 
of  green  and  yellowing  grain  between  the  hills  and 
the  water,  and  lying,  while  we  were  there,  in  sun- 
shine, it  might  have  looked  bright  and  even  happy, 
but  for  the  wretched  cottages,  of  which  there  were 
more  m  this  one  place  than  we  had  seen  on  all 
the  journey  from  lona. 

Once,  as  we  watched  the  boats  rounding  the 
steamer's  bows,  we  found  ourselves  next  to  this 
old  lady.  She  seemed  so  glad  to  talk  that  we 
asked  her  could  she  perhaps  tell  us  if  the  people 
of  Harris  were  as  miserable  as  their  cottages. 


116  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

"  Oli,"  she  said,  "  their  condition  is  hopeless !" 
And  then  she  went  on  to  tell  us  that  she  lived 
only  for  Harris,  and  that  there  was  no  one  who 
knew  better  than  she  its  poverty.  She  was,  we 
learned  afterwards,  Mrs. — or  Mistress,  as  Lowland- 
era  on  board  called  her — Thomas.  Her  husband 
had  been  a  Government  surveyor  in  the  island,  and 
since  his  death  she  had  interested  herself  in  the 
people,  among  whom,  for  many  years,  she  made  her 
home. 

The  story  of  Harris,  as  she  told  it  and  as  we 
have  since  read  it  in  the  report  of  the  Commission 
of  1883,  is  in  the  main  that  of  all  the  Islands  and 
Highlands.  It  is  the  story  of  men  toiling  on  land 
and  sea,  that  by  the  sweat  of  their  brow  they  may 
make,  not  their  own  bread,  but  the  venison  and 
game  of  others.  Thousands  starve  that  two  or 
three  may  have  their  sport.  The  land  in  the 
Hebrides  is  barren,  it  is  argued  in  behalf  of  the 
sportsmen.  Harris  is  the  barrenest  of  all,  Mrs. 
Thomas  declared.  We  could  see  this  for  our- 
selves; after  the  Switzerland  of  the  Hebrides,  the 
mountains  rose  a  solid  mass  of  black  rock  with 
scarce  a  trace  of  vegetation.  But  even  Harris  once 
supported  its  people.  That  was  before  they  were 
made  to  share  the  land  with  the  deer.  To-day  a 
few  valleys  and  hill-sides  are  overcrowded,  crofts 
divided  and  subdivided ;  while  others  once  as  green 
are  now  purple  with  heather,  and  silent  save  for 


On  the  Islands.  117 

the  guns  of  sportsmen.  Deer  forests  and  large 
farms  grow  larger  and  larger;  crofts  shrink,  until 
from  the  little  patch  of  ground,  long  since  over- 
worked, the  crofter  can  no  longer  reap  even  that 
which  he  sows.  And  yet  he  sees  better  land,  where 
perhaps  once  grew  his  potatoes  and  grain,  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  cruel  moors.  While  his  harvest 
is  starvation,  deer  and  grouse  live  and  multiply. 

Many  villages  were  cleared  when  the  great  deer 
forest  of  Harris  was  extended,  not  so  many  years 
ago.  The  people  were  turned  from  homes  where 
they  had  always  lived,  the  old  with  the  young,  and 
women  about  to  become  mothers.  Highlanders 
love  their  land.  Many  \vent  back  again  and  again, 
even  after  their  cottages  were  but  black  piles  of  • 
ruin.  Because  lie  evicts  tenants  who  will  not  pay 
their  rent,  the  Irish  landlord  is  called  cruel.  The 
evicted  in  the  Hebrides  have  hitherto  been  those 
who  interfere  with  the  landlord's  convenience  or 
amusement.  The  rent  has  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  And  yet  of  Scotch  evictions  but  comparatively 
little  has  been  heard.  Journalists  skilled  in  their 
trade  have  published  abroad,  from  one  end  of  the 
land  to  the  other,  the  tale  of  Irish  wrongs.  But 
who  knows  the  injustice  that  has  been  done  in 
Scotland  in  order  to  lay  waste  broad  tracts  of  good 
ground  ?  "  I  will  tell  you  how  Rodil  was  cleared," 
said  John  McDiannid,  of  Scalpa,  to  the  Commis- 
sioners. "  There  were  one  hundred  and  fifty  hearths 


118  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

in  Ilodil.  Forty  of  these  paid  rent.  When  young 
Macleod  (the  landlord)  came  home  with  his  newly 
married  wife  to  Ilodil,  he  went  away  to  show  his 
wife  the  place,  and  twenty  of  the  women  of  Ilodil 
came  and  met  them,  and  danced  a  reel  before  them, 
so  glad  were  they  to  see  them.  By  the  time  the 
year  was  out — twelve  months  from  that  day — these 
twenty  women  were  weeping  and  wailing,  their 
houses  being  unroofed  and  their  fires  quenched  by 
the  orders  of  the  estate.  I  could  not  say  who  was 
to  blame,  but  before  the  year  was  out  one  hundred 
and  fifty  fires  were  quenched." 

As  in  Ilodil,  so  it  was  where  now  stretches  the 
deer  forest  of  Harris — wherever,  indeed,  deer  are 
hunted  in  the  Highlands.  Whoever  wants  to 
learn  the  nature  of  some  of  the  blessings  which 
come  to  the  many  from  the  proprietary  power  and 
right  of  the  few — a  right  and  power  to  which  the 
Duke  of  Argyll  refers  all  advance  in  the  High- 
lands— let  him  read  the  "  History  of  the  Highland 
Clearances"  as  told  by  Alexander  Mackenzie,  the 
"  Gloomy  Memories  of  the  Highlands,"  by  Donald 
Macleod,  himself  one  of  the  evicted.  Their  story 
is  too  cruel  for  me  to  tell  again.  Their  country 
was  desolate ;  their  cities  were  burned  with  fire ; 
their  land,  strangers  devoured  it  in  their  presence, 
and  it  was  desolate.  Never  did  negro  slaves  in 
the  South  fare  as  did  the  Highland  men  and  wom- 
en cleared  from  the  glens  and  valleys  of  Suther- 


On  the  Islands.  119 

land.  Slaves  at  least  represented  so  much  money; 
but  the  crofter  was  and  is  less  valuable  to  the 
laird  than  his  sheep  and  his  deer.  Slaves  could  be 
sold.  This  was  the  one  thing  which  the  landlord, 
despite  all  his  rights,  could  not  do  with  his  croft- 
ers. He  could  burn  their  cottages,  starve  them  and 
their  families,  turn  them  adrift,  and  chase  them 
over  seas,  there  perhaps  to  meet  anew  starvation, 
disease,  and  death.  From  every  part  of  the  High- 
lands and  Islands,  from  Ross  and  Argyllshire,  as 
from  Sutherland,  hundreds  and  thousands  were 
forced  to  fly,  whether  they  would  or  not. 

And  with  those  who  stayed  at  home,  how  fared 
it  ?  The  evicted  squatted,  we  would  call  it,  on  the 
crofts  of  friends  and  relations  in  other  parts  of 
the  estate.  There  was  no  place  else  for  them  to 
go.  When  there,  they  sought  to  solve  the  bit- 
terest problem  of  life — how  to  make  that  which  is 
but  enough  for  one  serve  for  two — and  therein 
were  unsuccessful.  The  landlord  washed  his  hands 
of  them  and  their  poverty.  They  had  brought  it 
upon  themselves,  he  reasoned ;  if  crofts  were  over- 
crowded, the  fault  was  theirs.  You  might  as  well 
force  a  man  into  the  jungle  or  swamp  reeking  with 
malaria,  and  then  when  he  is  stricken  upbraid  him 
for  living  in  such  a  hot-bed  of  fever.  Mr.  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  says, 
"  For  a  parallel  to  this  monstrous  power  of  the 
land-owner,  under  which  life  and  property  are  en- 


120  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

tirely  at  his  mercy,  we  must  go  back  to  mediaeval, 
or  to  the  days  when,  serfdom  not  having  been 
abolished,  the  Russian  noble  was  armed  with  des- 
potic authority,  while  the  more  pitiful  results  of 
this  landlord  tyranny,  the  wide  devastation  of  cul- 
tivated lands,  the  heartles%  burning  of  houses,  the 
reckless  creation  of  pauperism  and  misery  out  of 
well-being  and  contentment,  could  only  be  ex- 
pected under  the  rule  of  Turkish  sultans  or 
greedy  and  cruel  pashas." 

Emigration  is  the  principal  remedy  suggested. 
The  landlords  of  old  enforced  it,  and  now,  for 
very  shame,  are  content  to  commend  it.  It  is  the 
remedy  most  to  their  taste.  It  would  leave  them 
alone  with  their  sheep  and  their  game.  If  the 
only  Highlanders  were  the  gillies  and  shepherds, 
there  would  be  an  end  of  bothersome  tales  of 
wrongs,  rousing  the  sympathy  of  the  public.  The 
real  reason  for  emigration  is  that  "  any  remedies 
which  might  be  expected  from  land  law  reform 
or  land  acts  will  be  and  are  likely  to  be  long  de- 
ferred, while  in  the  mean  time  the  people  are 
dying  like  dogs  from  starvation."  It  has  been 
urged  that  it  would  be  better  if  many  of  the  Isl- 
anders, like  men  of  the  east  coast,  became  fisher- 
men altogether  and  gave  up  their  land.  But  if 
they  did,  the  gain  would  not  be  theirs.  In  many 
lochs  and  bays  the  people  are  not  allowed  to  fish 
for  food  because  gentlemen  must  fish  for  pleasure. 


On  the  Islands.  121 

Few  have  boats  for  deep-sea  fishing;  none  have 
money  to  buy  them.  As  it  is,  in  the  Long  Island 
they  must  compete  with  well  -  equipped  fishing- 
smacks  sent  into  northern  seas  from  Billingsgate 
markets.*  Not  only  this,  but  in  both  Harris  and 
Lewis,  piers  and  harbors  are  few,  and  fishing-boats 
must  be  light  that  fishermen  may  pull  them  up  on 
shore  beyond  reach  of  the  tide.  In  parts  of  the 
northern  Highlands  people  have  been  removed 
from  the  glens  to  the  shores  in  hopes  that  they 
would  become  fishermen  ;  but  they  were  given  no 
boats,  no  harbors. 

For  Skye  and  the  Long  Island,  the  nearest  way 
to  the  main -land  is  by  Strome  Ferry,  where  the 
entrance  to  the  harbor  is  intricate,  and  so  poorly 
lighted  that  once  the  short  winter  days  set  in, 
as  its  passage  cannot  be  attempted  after  dark, 
traffic  between  the  islands  and  the  main-land  is 
seriously  interrupted.  But  indeed  one  can  but 
wonder  at  the  few  light-houses  on  this  dangerous 
west  coast.  Here  and  there  one  erected  on  a  lone- 
ly rock  far  out  at  sea  is  a  triumph  of  engineering 
skill.  But  the  most  difficult  channels,  the  wildest 
coasts,  are  left  without  a  light.  In  the  course  of 
our  long  journey  in  Hebridean  waters  I  think  we 
saw  but  half  a  dozen.  The  life -boat  institution 


*  I  have  just  beard  that  Americans  are  about  to  send  fish- 
ing-vessels over  to  these  waters. 


122  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

in  British  islands  is  now  supported  by  charity. 
It  seems  as  if  the  light-house  service  as  well  must 
fall  to  the  benevolence  of  advertisers  and  city  cor- 
porations. 

It  is  well  to  say  what  the  people  ought  to  do ; 
it  is  better  to  explain  what  they  cannot  do.  They 
are  hampered  and  held  back  on  every  side,  and 
then  the  stranger  is  told  that  he  need  not  pity  them, 
they  are  so  lazy.  They  are  thriftless  and  good- 
for-nothing,  Lowlanders  on  the  steamer  assured  us. 
When  you  first  go  among  them  you  believe  in 
their  laziness.  Their  little  patches  of  potatoes 
and  grain  are  full  of  weeds,  and  their  ditches  are 
choked ;  broken  windows  are  mended  with  rags 
or  heather,  dirt  and  rubbish  lie  waiting  to  be 
cleared  away.  From  their  doors  they  step  into 
the  mud.  A  very  little  industry  is  needed  to  set 
these  things  right.  You  wonder  if,  after  all,  it 
may  not  be  their  own  fault  that  they  are  so  poor. 
But  this  is  what  a  doctor  of  Raasay  told  the  Com- 
missioners, "The  prevailing  disease  is  poverty,  and 
the  chief  remedy  is  food."  The  people  have  not 
enough  to  eat ;  that  is  why  they  do  not  work  hard. 
You  have  but  to  look  into  their  faces  to  know  that 
they  are  starving.  Hardly  a  winter  passes  that 
food  has  not  to  be  begged  for  them.  Even  as  I 
write,  petitions  come  from  a  school-master  in  Lewis. 
Unless  money  and  meal  are  sent  to  them,  the  peo- 
ple in  his  district  cannot  live  through  the  winter. 


On  the  Islands.  123 

But  until  two  years  ago  had  they  not  been  from 
morning  to  night,  from  night  to  morning,  weak 
from  hunger ;  if  fields  had  been  made  to  yield  a 
richer  harvest ;  if  crofts  and  houses  had  been  kept 
neat  and  pretty,  the  profit  would  have  been  the 
landlords'.  The  greater  the  people's  industry,  the 
higher  the  rent  they  paid.  If  they  made  im- 
provements, the  rent  was  raised.  Nor  did  they 
know  at  what  moment  the  fruits  of  their  labor 
might  be  swept  away.  The  landlord  had  but  to 
say,  "I  want  iny  land,  you  must  go,"  and  their 
work  of  years  had  come  to  naught.  No  matter 
how  long  the  crofter  lived  in  the  cottage  where 
dwelt  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him,  the 
day  never  came  when  he  could  say  of  a  surety, 
"  To-morrow  this  roof  will  be  over  my  head,  these 
fields  and  pastures  will  be  mine  to  care  for." 

In  the  Hebrides,  the  landlord  has  always  had 
rights ;  the  crofter,  until  the  passing  of  the  Croft- 
ers' Bill  of  1886,  had  none.  I  remember  that  'on 
that  day  on  the  boat,  with  the  shores  of  hopeless 
Harris  in  sight,  Mrs.  Thomas  said  to  me,  "  There 
are  two  sides  to  the  question,  of  course.  The 
landlord  has  a  right  to  do  as  he  chooses  with  his 
own  land."  This  is  the  argument  of  the  landlords. 
They  can  quote  Scripture  in  its  support.  "A 
man  may  do  as  he  likes  with  his  own,"  an  Irish 
land-owner  reminded  his  tenants  the  other  day 
when  he  threatened  to  sweep  them  off  the  face  of 


124  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

his  estates.  It  is  an  old,  well-worn  argument;  to 
answer  it  French  revolutions  and  American  civil 
ware  have  been  fought.  Englishmen  have  been 
ever  ready  to  dispute  it  abroad ;  at  home  they  are 
its  advocates. 

Probably  we  ought  to  have  seen  this  other  side ; 
I  admit  that  it  would  have  been  far  pleasanter.  A 
few  letters  of  introduction — at  that  time,  at  any 
rate,  not  impossible  to  obtain — would  have  opened 
the  doors  of  many  of  the  big  houses  on  our  route, 

would  have  furnished  J with  a  gun  and  me  with 

days  of  boredom,  would  have  introduced  us  to  the 
natives  in  another  fashion ;  for,  according  to  all 
accounts,  they  would  then  have  greeted  us  as  if 
they  were  slaves,  and  not  the  most  fearless  and 
independent  people  in  Great  Britain.  Of  course 
we  understand  that  strangers  in  the  islands  who 
do  see  this  side  of  island  life,  find  it  as  delightful 
as  strangers  in  the  South  at  home  once  found  that 
of 'the  old  Southern  gentleman.  But  we  defy  any 
one  who  visits  the  islands  after  our  manner,  not 
to  be  filled  as  we  were  with  the  thought  of  the 
people's  misery;  for  the  bondage  in  which  they 
are  held  to-day  is  more  cruel  than  was  that  of 
slaves  in  the  slave  States  of  America  or  of  serfs  in 
Russia. 

There  are  good  landlords  in  the  Highlands,  just 
as  there  were  bad  slave-owners  in  the  South — men 
who  give  the  half-starved,  half-frozen  crofter  the 


On  the  Islands.  127 

blankets  and  meal  which,  if  he  were  emancipated, 
he  could  provide  for  himself;  for  the  crofter  is 
no  better,  but  indeed  worse  than  a  slave,  since  he 
must  bear  the  burdens  both  of  freedom  and  of 
slavery.  He  is  free  to  pay  more  for  land  than  it 
is  worth,  to  be  taxed  for  roads  which  are  never 
built,  and  for  schools  where  his  language  is  scorned, 
and,  in  some  islands,  his  religion  dishonored ;  and, 
moreover,  in  proportion  to  his  means,  to  be  taxed 
more  heavily  than  men  in  any  other  part  of  Scot- 
land ;  in  some  districts  he  is  free  to  cut  from  the 
moorland  peat  for  fuel,  to  gather  from  the  shore 
sea-weed  for  manure,  to  take  from  wraste  lands 
heather  or  grass  to  thatch  his  roof,  only  if  he  pays 
for  the  privilege.  Here  his  freedom  ends.  In  his 
house — the  Englishman's  castle — he  is  so  little  his 
own  master  that  he  cannot  keep  a  sheep  or  a  pig 
or  a  dog,  unless  it  be  the  will  of  his  laird.  If  lie 
asks  to  lay  his  grievances  before  the  factor  he  is 
called  a  rebel,  and  warned  not  to  dare  speak  in 
such  fashion  ;  and  this  by  a  landlord  praised  by 
the  great  world  because  of  the  winter  distribution 
of  blankets  and  meal.  If  his  complaints  should 
be  listened  to,  there  is  little  chance  of  redress  from 
men  who  value  rabbits  and  grouse  more  highly  than 
they  do  their  tenants.  He  is  wholly  at  the  mercy  of 
the  factor,  who  usually  holds  all  the  highest  offices 
on  the  estate,  and  has  the  power,  as  at  Barra,  to  dis- 
enfranchise an  entire  island.  This  is  the  account 


128  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

of  his  position  given  by  a  minister  in  Skye:  "  The 
crofter  has  no  protection  from  the  large  tucksmen  ; 
if  he  makes  a  complaint  he  can  get  no  redress. 
There  is  no  law  in  Skye.  Might  is  the  only  right, 
and  that,  too,  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  One  great  evil  which  sadly  needs  reform 
is  the  state  of  terrorism  under  which  the  small 
tenantry  live  through  the  insolent  threats  of  sub- 
ordinate officials,  whose  impudence  increases  in 
proportion  to  the  smallness  of  their  authority." 
It  was  time,  indeed,  when  the  Royal  Commission 
was  sent  to  the  Highlands ;  and  yet,  though  the 
Commission  has  reduced  rents  and  cancelled  ar- 
rears, it  has  not  struck  at  the  root  of  the  evil — the 
existing  relations  between  landlord  and  crofter. 

The  crofters  representative  in  Parliament  is 
often,  fortunately  not  always,  a  stranger  who  comes 
just  before  or  after  his  election — as  a  candidate 
for  Skye  came  to  that  island  while  we  were  there 
— and  tells  the  people  he  has  never  been  there  be- 
fore, they  do  not  know  him  as  yet,  but  he  hopes 
they  may  later ;  and  then  he  steams  away  in  his 
yacht.  Whether  elected  or  not,  we  may  feel  sure 
he  will  never  come  again.  But  what  is  to  be  hoped 
for  from  Parliament  ?  "  They  are  all  landlords  in 
the  House  of  Commons :  what  will  they  do  for  us  ?" 
the  crofters  and  cotters  of  Lewis  asked  the  other 
day.  That  is  why  they  are  taking  matters  into 
their  own  hands.  They  know  there  is  no  one  else 


On  the  Islands.  129 

to  help  them.  In  a  body  they  marched  upon  deer 
forest  and  sheep  farm,  and  scattered  over  the  isl- 
and or  drove  into  the  sea  sheep  and  deer.  When 
there  were  no  more  sheep  and  deer,  the  landlord 
would  be  glad  enough  to  give  them  back  land 
which  in  days  of  old  was  green  with  their  crops. 
And  now,  in  further  proof  of  the  justice  done  to 
crofters,  the  leaders  of  these  raids  await  trial  in 
Edinburgh,  to  which,  town  they  cannot  afford  to 
bring  their  witnesses,  and  where  no  lawyers  of  note 
will  defend  them.* 

The  crofter  is  a  slave  not  only  to  landlord  and 
factor,  but  often  to  the  merchant.  The  English- 
man, when  he  finds  the  truck  system  far  from 
home,  cannot  too  strongly  revile  it.  A  report  has 
but  come  from  Newfoundland  declaring  that  be- 
cause of  it  a  Newfoundlander  is  no  more  master 
of  his  own  destiny  than  was  a  mediaeval  serf  or  a 
Southern  negro  in  1860.  The  writer  need  not 
have  gone  1600  miles  to  the  colonies  to  expose 
an  evil  which  exists  in  the  British  Isles  but  600 
miles  from  London.f  The  Duke  of  Argyll  regrets 
that  it  is  employed  in  Tiree.  His  power  as  pro- 
prietor, the  one  power  for  good  on  his  estates, 
stops  short  most  unaccountably  where  other  people 

*  I  have  explained  elsewhere  the  result  of  this  trial. 

f  A  Truck  Act  has  been  passed  which  has  somewhat  mod- 
ified the  system  in  the  Hebrides,  but,  as  we  have  learned  from 
a  reliable  source,  it  has  not  proved  effectual. 
9 


130  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

might  think  it  could  be  exercised  to  best  advan- 
tage. Many  Western  Islanders,  like  Newfound- 
landers, are  bound  hand  and  foot  to  the  merchant. 
The  latter  provides  them  on  credit  with  all  the 
necessaries  of  life,  often  the  poorest  in  quality,  but 
always  the  highest  in  price.  In  return  the  croft- 
er's earnings,  before  he  has  gained  them,  belong  to 
the  merchant,  who,  moreover,  is  at  times  his  em- 
ployer as  well  as  his  creditor.  In  Harris  the  wom- 
en support  their  families  by  weaving  the  famous 
Harris  cloth.  To  Edinburgh  and  London  tailors 
it  brings  good  profit ;  to  them,  starvation  wages, 
paid  in  tea  or  sugar  or  meal.  No  money  is  in  cir- 
culation on  the  island.  Harris  people  have  given 
their  consent  to  emigrate,  and  then  at  the  last  mo- 
ment have  been  kept  prisoners  at  home  because  of 
a  debt  of  years  against  them. 

As  we  lay  by  the  island  of  Scalpa,  not  far  from 
Tarbert,  a  man  came  on  board  from  one  of  the 
boats.  He  had  a  roll  of  cloth  under  his  arm. 
He  gave  it  to  Mrs.  Thomas,  and  asked  if  some 
one  on  board  would  buy  it.  As  we  looked  at 
it  he  said  nothing,  but  the  pitiful  pleading  of  his 
eyes,  and  their  more  pitiful  disappointment  as  he 
turned  away  with  his  cloth,  told  the  story.  She 
tried  to  dispose  of  "their  cloth  for  them,  Mrs. 
Thomas  said ;  and  we  have  since  heard  that  she 
buys  more  from  them  than  even  the  local  mer- 
chant. 


On  the  Islands.  133 

The  Dunara  Castle  finally  anchored  at 

TAEBERT. 

The  principal  building  in  the  village  was  the  large 
white  manse,  half  hidden  in  trees.  A  parson's  first 
care,  even  if  he  went  to  the  Cannibal  Islands,  would 
be,  I  fancy,  to  make  himself,  or  have  made  for  him 
at  somebody  else's  expense,  a  comfortable  home. 
There  were  also  on  the  outskirts  of  the  village  two 
or  three  new,  well-built  cottages  for  men  in  Lady 
Scott's,  the  landlord's,  direct  service,  and  a  large, 
excellent  hotel,  the  only  place  in  Tarbert  where 
spirits  could  be  bought.  The  rich  may  have  their 
vices,  though  the  poor  cannot.  Beyond  was  mis- 
ery. Wherever  we  went  in  the  island  we  found  a. 
rocky  wilderness,  the  mountains  black  as  I  have 
never  seen  them  anywhere  else,  their  tops  so  bare 
of  even  soil  that  in  the  sunlight  they  glistened  as 
if  ice-bound.  Here  and  there,  around  the  lochs 
and  sloping  with  the  lower  rocky  hills,  were  weed- 
choked  patches  of  grain  and  huts  wreathed  in 
smoke,  their  backs  turned  hopelessly  to  the  road. 
Near  Tarbert  there  was  one  burrowed  out  like  a 
rabbit-hole,  its  thatched  roof  set  upon  the  grass 
and  weeds  of  the  hill-side.  Just  below,  in  the 
loch,  Lady  Scott's  steam -yacht  came  and  went. 
Beyond,  her  deer  forest,  a  range  of  black  mount- 
ains, stretched  for  miles.  Within  sight  and  low 
on  the  water  were  the  thick  woods,  in  the  heart  of 


134  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

which  stands  her  shooting  -  lodge.  The  contrast 
gave  the  last  bitter  touch  to  the  condition  of  the 
people.  They  starve  on  tiny  crofts,  their  only 
homes ;  their  landlord  holds  broad  acres  as  play- 
ground for  a  few  short  weeks. 

The  hovels  were  as  cheerless  within  as  without. 
I  do  not  know  why  it  is  that  one  takes  liberties  with 
the  poor  which  one  would  not  dare  take  with  the 
rich.  It  is  no  small  evil  of  poverty  that  it  is  ev- 
erybody's privilege  to  stare  at  it.  The  people  of 
Harris  are  hospitable,  and  receive  the  stranger  with 
courtesy,  but  you  can  see  that  they  resent  the  in- 
trusion. It  is  not,  I  fear,  to  our  credit  that  curios- 
ity got  the  better  of  our  scruples.  We  knocked  at 

a  cottage  door,  one  Sunday  afternoon,  J -,  as  an 

excuse,  asking  for  a  light.  As  we  drew  near  we 
heard  the  voice  of  some  one  reading  aloud.  Now  it 
was  silenced,  and  a  tall  old  man  in  his  shirt-sleeves 
came  to  the  door  with  an  open  Bible  in  his  hands. 
Within,  on  the  left,  was  the  dwelling-room  of  the 
household  ;  on  the  right,  the  stable,  cattle,  and  fam- 
ily share  the  only  entrance.  Into  the  room,  through 
a  single  pane  of  glass,  one  ray  of  daylight  fell  across 
the  Rembrandt-like  shadows.  On  the  mud  floor, 
at  the  far  end,  a  fire  of  peat  burned  with  a  dull  red 
glow,  and  its  thick,  choking  smoke  curled  in  clouds 
about  the  rafters  and  softened  the  shadows.  We 
could  just  make  out  the  figures  of  two  women 
crouching  by  the  fire,  the  curtained  bed  in  the  cor- 


On  the  Islands.  137 

ner,  the  spinning-wheel  opposite.  All  other  de- 
tails were  lost  in  gloom  and  smoke.  Until  you  see 
it  for  yourself,  you  could  not  believe  that  in  our 
nineteenth  century  men  still  live  like  this.  Miss 
Gordon  Gumming  says  that  to  the  spinning  and 
weaving  of  the  women  "  is  due  much  of  such  com- 
fort as  we  may  see  by  a  peep  into  some  of  their 
little  homes."  But  our  peep  showed  us  only  that 
women  weave  and  men  work  in  vain,  and  that  to 
speak  of  comfort  is  mockery  in  a  cottage  of  Harris, 
or,  indeed,  in  any  cottage  we  saw  in  any  part  of  the 
islands,  for  all  those  we  went  into  were  alike  in 
their  poverty  and  their  darkness.  As  a  rule,  the 
fire  burned  in  the  centre  on  a  circle  of  stones, 
and  over  it,  from  the  roof,  hung  chain  and  hook 
for  the  kettle.  They  have  not  changed  one  jot  or 
tittle  since,  a  century  ago,  they  moved  Pennant  to 
pity. 

As  we  left  the  hut  on  the  hill-side,  the  first  we 
visited,  "  I  beg  pardon,"  said  the  old  crofter,  who 
had  not  understood  J—  — 's  thanks.  His  words 
seemed  a  reproach.  We  felt  that  we  should  be 
begging  his  pardon.  To  force  our  way  in  upon 
him  in  his  degradation  was  to  add  one  more  to  the 
many  insults  he  has  had  to  bear.  He  stood  at  the 
door  a  minute,  and  then  went  back  into  the  gloom 
of  the  low  room,  with  its  mud  floor  and  smoky 
rafters,  which  lie  calls  his  home. 

All  day  long,  even  when  the  sun  shone,  as  it  did 


138  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

at  intervals  during  our  stay,  Harris  was  a  land  of 
sorrow  and  desolation,  but  in  the  evening  it  be- 
came a  land  of  beauty.  The  black  rock  of  the 
mountain-side  softened  into  purple  shadows  against 
the  gold  of  sky  and  sea,  and  in  this  glory  the 
hovels  and  the  people  and  the  misery  disappeared. 
And  when  the  sun  sank  behind  the  western  waters 
and  the  gold  faded,  there  fell  a  great  peace  over 
the  island,  and  with  it  began  the  twilight,  that 
lingered  until  it  grew  into  the  coming  day. 

It  was  on  Sunday  mornings  that  there  was  great- 
est stir  in  Tarbert.  Then  the  people  came  from 
far  and  near  to  meet  in  the  little  kirk  overlooking 
the  loch.  We  were  told  that  comparatively  few 
were  at  home.  This  was  the  season  when  they  go 
to  the  east  coast,  the  men  to  the  fishing,  the  women 
to  the  curing-houses ;  but  we  thought  they  came 
in  goodly  numbers  as  we  watched  them  winding 
with  the  road  down  the  opposite  hill -side,  and 
scrambling  over  the  rocks  behind  the  town.  Boats 
one  by  one  sailed  into  the  loch  and  to  the  pier, 
bringing  with  them  old  women  in  clean  white  caps 
and  tartan  shawls,  younger  women  in  feathered 
hats  and  overskirts,  men  in  bonnets  and  blue  sail- 
or-cloth. They  were  a  fine-looking  set  of  people, 
here  and  there  among  them  a  face  beautiful  with 
the  rich,  dark  beauty  of  the  South — all  that  is  left 
of  the  Armada.  As  they  came  up  upon  the  pier 
they  stopped  in  groups  under  the  shelter  of  a  boat- 


On  the  Islands.  139 

house,  for  the  wind  was  high,  the  men  to  comb 
their  beards  and  hair,  the  women  to  tie  one  an- 
other's bonnet -strings  and  scarfs,  to  smooth  one 
another's  shawls.  And  all  the  time  scarce  a  word 
was  spoken  ;  they  were  as  solemn  at  their  toilet  as 
if  already  they  stood  in  church. 

The  Islanders  are  as  melancholy  as  the  wilder- 
ness in  which  they  live.  The  stranger  among  them 
never  gets  used  to  their  perpetual  silence.  Their 
troubles  have  made  them  turn  from  the  amuse- 
ments they  once  loved.  The  pipes  now  seldom 
are  heard  in  the  Hebrides.  Their  one  consolation, 
their  one  resource,  is  religion,  and  to  them  religion 
is  a  tragedy.  Nowhere  was  the  great  conflict  in 
the  Church  of  Scotland  fought  with  such  intensity, 
such  passion,  as  in  Skye.  That  same  Sunday  in 
Harris,  we  met  the  people  coming  home  over  the 
hills,  and  still  they  walked  each  alone,  and  all  in 
unbroken  silence.  And  this  Sabbath  stillness  lasts 
throughout  the  week. 

It  is  not  only  in  Mr.  Black's  novels  you  meet 
kings  in  the  Lews.  From  out  of  the  boats  laden 
with  worshippers  there  stepped  the  King  of  Scalpa. 
He  is  a  Campbell,  we  were  told ;  and  what  is  more, 
if  he  had  his  rights  it  is  he  who  would  bear 
the  Argyll  titles,  enjoy  the  Argyll  wealth,  instead 
of  the  Campbell  who  calls  himself  Duke  and 
writes  books  in  the  castle  at  Inverary.  His  story 
is  the  usual  romance  of  the  Highlands :  a  murder, 


140  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

a  flight,  the  succession  of  the  younger  brother  to 
titles  and  estates,  the  descendants  of  the  murderer, 
exiles  in  a  far  island.  And  so  it  is  that  the  real 
Duke  of  Argyll  is  but  a  merchant  in  Scalpa.  How- 
ever, if  the  so-called  Duke  had  nothing  more  seri- 
ous to  fear  than  the  pretensions  of  the  King  of 
Scalpa,  he  might  rest  at  ease.  It  is  his  right  not 
to  a  name,  but  to  the  privilege  to  do  with  his  own 
as  he  likes,  that  he  must  needs  defend.  He  can 
afford  to  ignore  the  Campbells  of  the  Outer  Hebri- 
des ;  but  let  him  fight  with  his  deadliest  weapons 
against  the  crofters  who  to-day  pay  him  rent.  All 
the  arguments  he  has  set  forth  in  "  Scotland  as  it 
Was,  and  Scotland  as  it  Is,"  in  themselves  are  not 
enough  to  avert  the  day  of  reckoning  which  even 
to  him,  apparently,  seems  so  near  at  hand. 

We  left  Harris,  as  we  came  to  it,  in  the  Dunara 
Castle,  and  dropped  anchor  in  the  Bay  of  Uig,  in 

SKYE, 

one  morning  while  the  day  was  still  young.  The 
shores  were  circled  about  with  patches  of  grain 
and  potatoes  and  many  cottages ;  and  Skye,  as  we 
first  saw  it,  seemed  fair  and  fertile  after  the  rocks 
of  Harris.  Its  people  are  little  better  off,  how- 
ever. It  was  here,  about  Uig,  on  the  estates  of 
Captain  Fraser,  that  crofters  rebelled  in  1884:  as 
those  of  Lewis  are  rebelling  to-day.  Their  rents 
in  many  cases  have  been  reduced,  their  arrears 


On  the  Islands.  141 

cancelled.  But  landlords  as  they  exist,  or  crofters, 
must  go  before  there  can  be  more  than  negative 
improvement  in  the  islands. 

When  we  were  rowed  to  the  shore  the  landlord 
of  the  Uig  Inn  stood  posing  as  modern  warden  of 


DOING  SKYE. 


the  brand-new  round  tower  on  the  hill-top.  He 
took  our  knapsacks,  and  set  us  on  the  way  to  the 
Quitting. 

A  steep  climb  up  a  wooded  corrie  brought  us 
to  the  moors,  the  long  purple  distances  unbroken 
save  for  the  black  lines  marking  where  the  peat  had 


142  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

been  cut,  and  the  black  mounds  where  the  cuttings 
had  been  piled  at  intervals  along  the  road.  Once 
we  passed  men  and  women  loading  a  cart  with 
them.  Once  we  saw  a  rude  shepherd's  hut,  on  a  lit- 
tle hillock,  surrounded  by  sheep.  And  in  the  long 
walk,  that  was  all!  "When  we  started  across  the 
moorland  the  sun  shone  and  the  morning  was  hot. 
"When  suddenly  the  moorland  came  to  an  end  and 
gave  way  to  the  tall  jagged  rocks  of  the  Quiraing, 
the  sky  was  all  gray  and  the  mist  fell  fast  behind 
us.  We  left  the  road  for  a  foot-path,  and  at  once 
lost  our  way.  AVe  scrambled  over  rocks,  slipped 
up  and  down  soft  spongy  hills,  jumped  streams,  and 

skirted  lochs,  J stopping  in  the  most  impossible 

places  to  make  notes.  We  were  now  ankle-deep 
in  mud,  now  knee-high  in  wet  grass  and  heather. 
The  guide-book  says  the  Quiraing  cannot  be  de- 
scribed; I  am  sure  I  cannot  describe  it,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  I  did  not  see  it.  At  first  I  was 
too  much  taken  up  in  trying  not  to  kill  myself ; 
when  the  climbing  was  a  little  less  dangerous  and 
I  looked  about  me,  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen. 
The  mist  had  hidden  the  top  of  the  rocks  and  was 
rolling  down  fast  towards  us.  J—  —  was  very  anx- 
iously looking  at  the  guide-book  and  at  the  sea. 
Suddenly  he  seized  me  and  pulled  me,  panting, 
behind  him,  over  bowlders,  through  bracken,  down 
a  hill  as  steep  as  a  house,  in  our  hurry  starting 
avalanches  of  stones.  Then  he  jumped  into  the 


On  the  Islands.  143 

bed  of  a  stream,  down  which  we  rushed,  up  to  our 
knees  in  water,  to  the  loch  at  the  bottom.  It  was 
a  mad  flight.  But  by  this  time  we  could  not  see 
our  hands  before  us. 

"  I  am  half  dead,"  said  I. 

"  If  you  don't  come  on  we'll  both  be  dead,"  said 
J . 

And  just  then,  more  by  good  luck  than  good 
management,  we  found  ourselves  on  a  road. 

J had  studied  the  lay  of  the  land  before  our 

start.  He  knew  this  must  be  the  road  by  the 
coast,  twice  as  long  on  its  way  to  Uig  as  that 
over  which  we  had  come ;  but  there  was  no  find- 
ing our  way  back  in  the  mist.  It  fell  from  above, 
it  rose  from  the  ground,  it  closed  about  us  on  all 
sides.  In  a  few  minutes  cloaks  and  hoods  were 
soaked.  We  tried  to  be  as  indifferent  as  the 
Highlomaniac  who  pretends  he  likes  this  sort  of 
thing.  We  sat  on  a  stone  by  the  way-side  to  eat 
the  few  sandwiches  we  had  brought  with  us,  and 
declared  it  an  excellent  joke.  We  walked  across 
a  dripping  field  as  calmly  as  if  it  had  been  dry 
land,  so  that  we  might  not  come  face  to  face  with 
a  monstrous  bull  which  kept  our  path.  And  when 
the  road  came  out  close  to  the  sea,  and  the  mist 

turned  into  a  driving  rain,  J even  pulled  out 

his  guide-book  and  on  its  back  made  mysterious 
scrawls,  which  he  said  represented  Duntulm  Cas- 
tle, a  gray  ruin  on  a  high  cliff,  looking  seaward. 


144  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

There  were  by  the  road  many  groups  of  huts 
black,  soaked,  chimneyless ;  always  near  them  a 
large  manse  and  sometimes  a  larger  school-house, 
which  the  people  must  maintain  if  they  starve  for 
it.  Women  with  hunger  on  their  faces  looked 
after  us.  Children  with  old  brown  bags  tied  about 
their  waists  for  all  clothing  stood  at  the  doors  to 
watch,  but  not  one  smiled  at  the  sight.  And  yet 
we  must  have  been  funny !  And  the  villages  were 
silent  as  the  moorland.  There  was  not  a  voice  to 
be  heard.  The  women  to  whom  we  spoke  shook 
their  heads ;  "  Xo  English,"  was  their  only  answer. 
The  one  person  we  "found  who  could  talk  it  was  a 
man,  and  he  had  so  many  gutturals  we  could  scarce 
understand  him. 

Near  Duntulm  Castle  was  a  shooting-lodge ;  on 
the  water  a  steam-yacht  lay  at  anchor.  The  slave- 
driver  is  found  for  at  least  six  weeks  in  the  midst 
of  his  slaves. 

We  arrived  at  the  inn  about  three  in  the  after- 
noon, drenched  and  weary.  A  room  was  ready  for 
us,  a  bright  fire  burning  on  the  hearth.  They 
always  expected  people  to  come  home  wet,  the 
landlord's  daughter  said.  She  carried  off  our  wet 
clothes ;  she  lent  me  a  dress ;  she  brought  us  hot 
whiskey  and  water.  One  must  be  thoroughly  tired 
to  know  what  comfort  means. 

We.  had  our  tea  with  two  English  maiden  ladies 
of  the; .species  one  meets  in  Swiss  and  Italian  pen- 


On  the  Islands.  145 

sions.  We  sat  in  a  well-warmed  room  at  a  well- 
spread  table.  In  the  black,  smoky  huts  half-starved 
men,  wrornen,  and  children  were  eating  dry  oatmeal ; 
a  few,  perhaps,  drinking  tea  with  it.  This  is  the 
extravagance  with  which  the  crofters  have  been  re- 
proached. They  buy,  or  rather  go  into  debt  for, 
tea  and  sugar  as  well  as  meal,  and  therefore  their 
landlords  think  them  prosperous.  They  have  never 
been  so  well  off  before,  the  Commissioners  were 
told ;  once  they  lived  on  shell-fish  throughout  the 
summer.  Yes,  it  was  true,  a  minister  of  Snizort 
admitted,  they  did  drink  tea.  But  the  people  have 
no  milk,  now  pasture -land  has  been  taken  from 
them.  The  landlord  needed  it  for  his  large  sheep 
farms  and  deer  forests.  1  suppose  they  should  go 
back  to  the  shell  -  fish  as  of  old.  If  they  have 
food  to  eat,  why  complain  of  its  quality  ?  If  this 
be  so,  if  crofters  of  to-day,  compared  to  their  an- 
cestors, live  in  luxury,  then  has  the  time  indeed 
come  when  something  should  be  done  for  them. 
"Who  will  call  them  lazy  or  indifferent  who  has 
considered  what  the  life  of  the  Islander  has  been 
for  generations  ?  The  wonder  is  that  he  has  en- 
ergy enough  to  keep  on  living. 
We  went  the  next  day  to 

DUNVEGAN. 

The  road  lay  over  long  miles  of  moors,  with  now 

and  then  beautiful  distant  views  of  the  mountains 
10 


146  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

of  Harris,  but  pale  bine  shadows  on  the  western 
horizon,  and  of  the  high  peaks  of  the  Cuchullins, 
dark  and  sombre  above  the  moorland. 

Here  and  there  at  long  intervals  we  came  to  the 
wretched  groups  of  cottages  we  had  begun  to  know 
so  well.  Old  witch-like  women  and  young  girls 
passed,  bent  double  under  loads  of  peat  or  sea- 
weed, so  heavy  that  were  the  same  thing  seen  in 
Italy,  English  people  would  long  since  have  filled 
columns  of  the  Times  with  their  sympathy.  As  it 
is,  these  burdens  are  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course, 
or  sometimes  even  as  but  one  of  the  many  pictur- 
esque elements  of  Highland  life.  From  one  writer 
one  hears  of  the  Skye  lassies,  half  hidden  under 
bundles  of  heather,  stopping  to  laugh  and  chatter ; 
from  another  of  Lewis  women  knitting  contented- 
ly as  they  walked  along  with  creels,  bearing  bur- 
dens that  would  have  appalled  a  railway  porter  of 
the  south,  strapped  to  their  backs.  We  saw  no 
smiles,  no  signs  of  contentment.  On  the  faces  of 
the  strongest  women  there  was  a  look  of  weariness 
and  of  pain.  But  perhaps  the  most  pathetic  faces 
in  this  land  of  sorrow  were  those  of  the  children, 
already  pinched  and  care-worn.  I  know  others  who 
have  felt  this  even  as  we  did.  An  Englishman 
who  last  summer  spent  a  week  in  Skye  has  since 
told  us  how  day  after  day  he  and  his  wife  went 
upon  their  excursions  lunchless,  because  in  the 
first  village  to  which  they  came  they  emptied 


On  the  Islands. 


147 


A   REAL   HIGHLAND   LASSIE. 


their  luncheon-basket  among  the  half-naked,  half- 
starved  children  they  found  there.  They  could  not 
bear  the  sight  of  the  hungry  little  faces.  But  even 
in  his  sympathy,  the  general  poverty  seemed  to 
him  only  right,  he  said,  since  it  is  in  such  perfect 
harmony  with  the  dismal,  dreary  land  in  which  the 
people  live.  If  they  were  happy,  however,  if  moors 
and  hills  were  green  with  their  crops,  would  it  still 
seem  so  dismal  ? 


148  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

That  day  and  those  which  had  preceded  and  those 
which  followed  we  went  into  many  huts,  talked  to 
many  people.  We  became  bold  because  we  wished 
to  learn  for  ourselves  the  truth  of  what  we  had 
heard,  and  not  to  be  prejudiced  by  hearsay.  The 
crofter's  hut  is  felt  to  be  a  disgrace  to  the  High- 
lands. The  landlord  shifts  all  responsibility.  The 
crofter  alone  is  at  fault ;  he  has  no  shame  in  living 
in  his  hovel,  which  is  scarcely  fit*  to  shelter  a  dog. 
This  is  the  favorite  argument.  How  the  crofter, 
without  money,  without  other  materials  than  those 
at  his  disposal,  could  build  anything  better  has  not 
as  yet  been  explained.  If,  however,  he  does  contrive 
to  make  it  better,  his  rent  is  raised,  and  lie  might, 
until  within  two  years,  have  been  turned  out  on 
the  morrow.  If  he  moves  into  a  house  set  up  by 
a  landlord  there  is  again  question  of  higher  rent, 
though  he  may  find  it  has  been  put  up  so  cheaply 
that  cold  winds  pour  through  cracks  and  crannies, 
heavy  rains  soak  through  roof  and  walls.  In  his 
own  black  hut,  if  he  lives  with  his  cattle  he  can 
at  least  keep  warm.  His  contentment  in  his 
degradation  is  a  myth.  To  many  cottages  we 
were  absolutely  refused  admittance.  Ours  was 
not  the  experience  of  Miss  Gordon  Gumming. 
AVhenever  we  approached  a  cottage,  a  kindly  voice 
did  not  bid  us  welcome.  I  remember  one  in  par- 
ticular where  the  door  was  shut  against  us.  Of  a 
woman  of  the  village  who  could  speak  English — 


On  the  Islands.  149 

and  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  with  few  rare 
exceptions  people  in  the  Hebrides  speak  but  Gaelic 
— and  who  had  already  shown  us  her  smoky,  dismal 
home,  we  asked  that  we  might  be  let  in  to  see  the 
old  loom.  No,  was  the  first  answer  sent  out ;  its 
owner  will  not  be  dressed.  No,  was  the  second ; 
the  loom  will  not  be  working.  No,  was  the  third  and 
final;  "  we  wass  just  pretending  about  the  loom  ;  it 
wass  the  house  we  wanted  to  see."  In  another, 
though  the  woman  drew  up  chairs  by  the  peat 
smouldering  and  smoking  in  the  middle  of  the  floor, 
there  was  no  mistaking  she  looked  upon  us  as  in- 
truders. She  shook  her  head  and  said  without  a 
smile,  "  No  English,"  when  we  spoke  to  her ;  and 
then  she  turned  her  back  and  began  to  comb  her 
hair.  A  bright,  fresh-looking  girl  who  rowed  us  over 
the  water  near  Kingsburgh  House  received  us  more 
amiably.  It  was  the  usual  interior, thick  with  smoke, 
all  details  lost  in  black  shadow,  though  without  the 
sun  was  shining.  "  You  will  find  our  houses  very 
queer  places  to  live  in,"  she  said.  And  as  she  fer- 
ried us  across,  every  few  minutes  she  turned  and 
asked  if  we  didn't  find  their  cottages  queer  homes. 
Nothing  is  left  of  Flora  Macdonald's  house 
which  has  made  Kingsburgh  famous.  But  our 
ferry-woman  pointed  to  a  clump  of  trees  on  the 
shores  of  the  loch  where  it  once  stood.  "  Flora 
Macdonald  was  a  good  friend  of  the  people,"  she 
said  ;  "  she  was  a  strong  woman  and  clever,  and  she 


150  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

helped  to  hide  Prince  Charlie  from  those  who 
were  in  search  of  him,  and  for  that  reason  she  will 
be  loved  and  remembered." 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  these  were  her  words. 
They  so  struck  us  at  the  time  that  I  wrote  them 
down  once  we  were  on  shore  again.  I  have  heard 
people  wonder  at  the  intelligence  Italian  peasants 
show  in  expressing  themselves ;  but  it  is  not  more 
striking  than  that  of  Western  Islanders.  When 
they  could  speak  English,  it  always  made  us  mar- 
vel. No  one  can  read  the  report  of  their  evidence 
before  the  Royal  Commission  without  marvelling 
with  us. 

It  was  not  only  in  Skye  we  talked  to  the  people  ; 
already  in  Harris  we  had  much  to  say  to  those 
who  had  the  English.  The  very  fact  that  we 
were  walking,  a  great  part  of  the  time  with  packs 
on  our  backs,  made  the  people  meet  us  on  more 
friendly  terms  than  if  we  drove  in  coaches  or  sailed 
in  yachts.  We  were  strangers,  it  was  evident; 
but  we  \vere  not  sportsmen  or  moneyed  tourists. 
On  every  side  we  heard  the  same  story  of  hated 
landlords  and  exhausted  crofts.  We  know  that 
what  we  say  can  have  but  little  influence  for  good 
or  evil.  And  yet  when  we  remember  the  sad 
stories  to  which  we  listened,  and  the  cruel  lot  of 
those  who  told  them,  we  would  not  run  the  small- 
est risk  of  making  that  lot  still  more  cruel,  those 
stories  still  more  sad.  There  is  ill-feeling  enough 


On  the  Islands.  151 

between  Hebridean  landlords  and  their  slaves.  In 
three  cases  at  least  crofters  were  turned  from  their 
crofts  because  they  gave  evidence  to  the  Commis- 
sioners of  1883.  It  is  well  to  be  on  the  safe  side. 
The  chances  are,  not  a  landlord  will  know  that  we 
have  been  writing  about  his  estates  after  walking 
over  them ;  but  we  think  it  best  to  give  no  clew 
to  the  identity  of  men  who  told  us  in  a  friendly 
way  that  which  already  had  been  proclaimed  offi- 
cially. 

The  chief  complaint  was  the  same  wherever  we 
went :  "  We  have  not  enough  land  ;  we  could  and 
would  pay  rent  willingly  if  we  had  more  ground  to 
cultivate.  As  it  is,  our  crofts  are  not  large  enough 
to  keep  us  in  food."  The  outside  world  has  been 
busy  watching  the  battle  in  Ireland ;  little  atten- 
tion has  been  spared  to  the  Highlands ;  yet  every 
small  paragraph  on  the  subject  for  which  newspa- 
pers can  make  room,  between  accounts  of  stolen 
breeches  and  besieged  members  of  Parliament, 
shows  the  determination  of  the  men  who  are  fight- 
ing the  same  battle  in  the  far  north.  If  troops  are 
kept  in  Ireland,  if  Welsh  tithes  can  only  be  col- 
lected by  hussars,  war-ships  are  sent  to  the  Islands. 
If  Irishmen,  protected  by  a  Land  League,  refuse  to 
pay  rent,  so  do  Scotch  crofters.  Indeed,  the  latter 
are  far  more  determined  and  daring.  They  know, 
too,  how  to  hold  together.  In  Glendale,  an  out-of- 
the-way  corner  of  Skye  to  which  strangers  seldom 


152  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

penetrate,  not  a  crofter  has  paid  rent  for  five  years. 
An  old  man,  tenant  on  another  estate,  told  us  about 
them  with  pride.  "  No,  sir,"  lie  said,  "  they  have 
no  paid  a  penny  for  five  years,  but  the  factor  he 
will  keep  friends  with  them.  He  will  know  ferry 
well  if  he  wass  not  their  friend  it  will  be  worse 
trouble  that  will  be  coming  whatever." 

He  was  a  fine,  healthy  old  man,  between  sixty 
and  seventy ;  and  when  he  found  that  we  sympa- 
thized, he  walked  about  half  a  mile  just  to  talk 
with  us.  He  pretended  he  came  to  show  us  the 
way,  but  as  the  road  was  straight  before  us  it  was 
easy  to  see  through  his  excuse. 

J asked  him  what  he  thought  about  the  croft- 
er question.  "  I  wrill  be  a  real  old  Land  Leaguer 
every  time,"  he  declared ;  and  then  he  went  on  to 
tell  us  that  in  his  part  of  the  island  the  crofters 
held  together  like  one  man.  The  Commission  was 
coming;  it  was  slow,  but  they  would  wait  for  it. 
Then,  if  it  did  not  improve  their  condition,  they 
would  take  matters  into  their  own  hands.  Their 
landlord  was  good  enough,  as  landlords  went ;  he 
was  a  civil-spoken  gentleman  if  rents  were  paid  on 
the  very  day  they  were  due,  but  that  was  about  all 
that  could  be  said  for  him.  Rents  were  not  so 
high  on  his  estate  as  on  others,  but  the  taxes  were 
heavy,  and  it  was  more  land  they  needed.  "  You 
will  see  those  potatoes  " — and  he  pointed  to  a  tiny 
green  patch  sloping  down  from  the  road  to  a  ditch, 


On  the  Islands. 


153 


beyond  which  was  heather — "  you  will  see  for  your- 
self they  grow  well  whatever.  And  they  would  be 
growing  as  well  on  the  other  side  of  the  ditch, 
where  I  myself  have  planted  them  in  other  days. 


DUNVEGAN   CASTLE. 


But  what  will  grow  there  now?  Heather  and 
ferns !  And  it  will  he  heather  and  ferns  you  will 
see  as  far  as  you  can  for  twelve  miles.  If  they 
will  be  giving  us  more  land,  sir,  it's  no  trouble 
from  the  Highlanders  they  will  be  having ;  but  if 
they  don't  give  it  to  us  we  will  take  it." 

He  shook  hands  heartily  with  us  both  when  he 
left.    One  may  doubt  the  demagogue  who  uses  the 


1 54  Our  Journey  to  tfie  Hebrides. 

people's  suffering  for  political  capital ;  but  one  can 
but  respect  a  man  like  this  sturdy  old  crofter,  him- 
self one  of  the  people,  who  knows  his  wrongs  and 
determines  to  right  them.  His  methods  may  be 
illegal ;  so  have  been  those  of  many  men  who 
have  struggled  for  freedom. 

At  Dunvegan  Inn  we  were  again  in  civilized  so- 
ciety. We  dined  with  two  young  men  from  Lon- 
don who  were  followed  even  here  by  the  Saturday 
Review  and  the  Standard.  They  took  interest  in 
the  evicted  Irish,  and  ignored  the  existence  of 
Highland  crofters ;  they  could  tell  us  much  bf  the 
fish,  but  nothing  of  the  fishermen.  They  were 
anxious  to  direct  us  to  many  howling  wildernesses 
within  an  easy  walk  of  the  dinner-table,  where  we 
could  escape  from  the  people ;  and  when  the  peo- 
ple, in  the  shape  of  two  Aberdeen  farmers,  full  of 
the  crofter's  wrongs,  appeared  at  breakfast,  they 
went  from  the  room  in  disgust.  I  think  this  dis- 
gust would  have  been  greater  had  they  known  how 
much  more  interesting  we  found  the  farmers. 

Beyond  the  inn  the  road  led  through  a  dense 
wood  to  the  castle  of  the  Macleod  of  Macleod. 
Trees  will  not  grow  on  Hebridean  soil  until  the 
laird  wishes  to  raise  them  for  himself;  then  they 
thrive  well  enough.  Of  course  we  did  not  expect 
to  find  them  growing  on  northern  exposed  shores ; 
but  surely  there  must  be  other  sheltered  spots  be- 
sides those  directly  around  the  laird's  house.  How- 


On  the  Islands.  155 

ever,  it  is  the  same  with  his  crops  ;  broad  acres 
are  covered  by  his  grain  and  that  of  his  large  ten- 
ants ;  his  pasture-land  is  fresh  and  green.  It  is  a 
strange  fact  that  only  when  the  crofter  asks  to  cul- 
tivate the  land  does  it  become  absolutely  barren. 
It  is  but  a  step  from  the  wild,  lonely  moorland  to 
the  beautiful  green  wood  at  Dnnvegan.  Landward 
it  shuts  in  the  castle,  whose  turreted  keep  rises 
high  above  the  ivy -grown  battlemented  walls, 
crowning  a  rocky  island  in  a  sheltered  corner  of 
the  loch.  The  water  has  been  drained  from  the 
natural  moat,  but  the  rock  falls  sheer  and  steep 
from  the  castle  gate,  and  the  drawbridge  still  cross- 
es the  gulf  below.  We  did  not  go  inside ;  we  were 
told  that  the  present  wife  of  the  Macleod  objected 
to  visitors,  even  though  she  admitted  them.  We 
believe  there  are  tapestries  and  old  armor  and  the 
usual  adjuncts  to  be  seen  for  the  asking,  such  things 
as  one  can  find  in  any  museum ;  but  it  is  only  by 
going  to  the  islands  that  you  can  see  the  crofters' 
wrongs. 

Almost  at  the  end  of  the  woods,  and  yet  shel- 
tered by  them,  was  a  pretty  old-fashioned  flower- 
garden,  surrounded  by  well-clipped  hedges,  and  as 
well  cared  for  as  the  garden  of  an  English  castle. 
Nearer  to  the  inn,  on  a  low  hill,  was  the  graveyard 
of  the  Macleod.  We  pushed  open  the  tumble- 
down gate  and  squeezed  through.  A  hundred 
years  ago  Dr.  Johnson  found  fault  with  the  bad 


156 


Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 


English  on  Lord  Lo vat's  tomb ;  to-day  we  could 
hardly  find  the  tomb.  The  stone  on  which  the  in- 
scription was  carved  lay  in  pieces  on  the  ground. 
It  may  be  that  the  Macleod  of  Macleod  has  bank- 
rupted himself  to  save  his  tenants  from  starvation. 


• 

,   -V.  . 

_      ;.,.- 


GRAVEYARD  OF  T1IE  MACLEOD. 

This  is  most  praiseworthy  on  his  part.  But  we 
could  not  help  thinking  that  if  he  and  all  the  Mac- 
leods,  from  one  end  of  Great  Britain  to  the  other, 
are  so  anxious  to  be  buried  here,  they  might  among 
them  find  money  enough  to  free  the  enclosure  of 
their  dead  from  the  whiskey  bottles  and  sandwich 
tins  left  by  the  tourist.  The  resting-place  of  the 
dead  Macleod  lies  desolate ;  not  far  off  is  the  gar- 


On  the  Islands.  157 

den,  with  smooth  lawn  and  many  blossoms.  A  few 
flowers  less,  perhaps,  and  at  least  the  bottles  and 
tins  that  defile  what  should  be  a  holy  place,  could 
be  cleared  away.  And  this  graveyard,  with  its 
broken  tombs  and  roofless  chapel,  is  a  ruin  of  yes- 
terday. A  century  ago  Dr.  Johnson  saw  it  still 
cared  for  and  in  order.  The  people  in  Dunvegan 
told  us  that  twenty  years  since  the  roof  fell  in  ;  it 
has  never  been  repaired.  We  have  been  to  the 
graveyard  of  old  St.  Pancras  in  London,  where 
every  few  minutes  trains  rush  above  the  dese- 
crated graves ;  but  here  the  dead  are  unknown,  or 
else,  like  Mary  "Wolstonecraft  and  Godwin,  their 
tombs  have  been  removed  beyond  the  reach  of 
modern  improvements.  We  have  been  to  the 
Protestant  burying-ground  in  the  cemetery  of  old 
St.  Louis  in  New  Orleans,  neglected  because  those 
who  lie  there  belong  to  the  despised  faith.  And 
yet  neither  of  these  is  dishonored  as  is  the  grave- 
yard where  sleep  the  Macleods  of  the  far  and  near 
past,  whose  greatness  the  living  Macleods  never 
cease  to  sing.  Beneath  the  weeds  are  old  gray 
slabs,  with  carvings  like  those  of  lona ;  in  the  ru- 
ined weed-grown  chapel  walls  are  fresh  white  mar- 
ble tablets.  At  Dunvegan  the  dead  are  not  for- 
gotten, not  despised ;  they  are  only  neglected. 
The  mower  comes  and  cuts  the  long  grass  from 
above  their  trampled  graves.  Let  the  laird  make 
hay  while  the  sun  shines,  for  the  day  is  coming 


158  Oar  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

when  the  storms,  forcver*brooding  over  the  Isle 
of  Mists,  will  break  forth  with  a  violence  he  lias 
never  felt  before,  and  he  and  his  kind  will  be 
swept  away  from  off  the  face  of  the  land. 

To-day  Macleod  of  Macleod  is  a  poor  man.  One 
year  of  famine,  to  keep  the  crofters  from  starving, 
he  emptied  his  own  purse.  It  is  but  another  proof 
of  the  uselessness  of  charity  in  the  Hebrides.  AVhat 
did  it  profit  the  crofters  that  Macleod  became  for 
their  sake  a  bankrupt?  They  still  starve.  He 
who  would  really  help  them  must  be  not  only 
their  benefactor,  but  their  emancipator. 

From  Duuvegan  to 

STRUAN 

it  was  all  moorland.  The  shadeless  road  ran  for 
miles  between  the  heather,  from  which  now  and 
again,  as  we  passed,  rose  the  startled  grouse.  Far 
in  front  were  the  Cuchullins,  only  their  high, 
jagged  peaks  showing  above  the  clouds  that  hung 
heavy  about  them.  The  little  Struan  inn,  which 
•we  had  to  ourselves,  was  low  down  by  the  water, 
at  the  foot  of  a  wide  hill-side  planted  with  turnips. 
On  the  brow  of  the  hill,  like  so  many  bowlders  in 
the  mud,  were  strewn  the  huts  of  a  miserable  vil- 
lage. Manse  and  kirk  were  at  a  becoming  distance 
across  the  road. 

Though  this  was  after  the  12th  of  August,  when 
the  "Wilderness  of  Skye  is  supposed  to  be  of  some 


On  the  Islands.  159 

use,  we  saw  in  miles  of  moorland  one  man  fishing, 
and  a  second  shooting ;  for  the  latter  a  carriage 
waited  on  the  road  below.  In  order  that  these 
two,  and  perhaps  half  a  dozen  more  like  them, 
should  have  a  fortnight's  amusement,  the  land 
from  Dunvegan  to  Sligachan  has  been  cleared  of 
its  inhabitants.  On  the  high-road  between  these 
two  places  —  a  distance  of  about  twenty -two  or 
twenty-three  miles — there  are  not  above  a  dozen 
huts,  and  only  one  or  two  decent  houses.  It  is 
true,  there  is  a  large  and  flourishing  distillery. 

After  Struan  we  were  still  on  the  moors.  The 
onty  breaks  in  the  monotony  were  the  showers, 
the  mile-stones,  and  the  water-falls.  The  mount- 
ains, upon  which  we  had  counted  for  the  beauty 
of  the  walk,  were  now  completely  lost  in  the 
clouds.  Not  until  we  were  within  two  miles  of 
Sligachan  did  the  thick  veil  before  them  roll 
slowly  up,  showing  us  peaks  rising  beyond  peaks, 
rugged  hollows,  and  deep  precipices.  But  it  fell 
again  almost  at  once,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  way 
we  saw  but  one  high  mountain  corning  out  and 
being  swallowed  up  again  in  the  mist  and  clouds. 

Near  the  inn,  and  a  hundred  yards  or  so  from 
the  road,  was  a  reedy  pool.  A  man  stood  in  the 
water,  a  woman  on  the  shore,  both  silently  fishing 
in  the  rain.  It  is  in  duck-puddles  like  this — in 
which,  were  they  at  home,  an  American  boy  would 
sail  his  boat  or  throw  his  line  to  his  heart's  content 


160  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

—that  guests  in  Highland  inns,  by  special  kind- 
ness of  the  landlord,  are  allowed  to  fish,  this  per- 
mission being  advertised  as  a  leading  attraction  of 
the  inn. 

We  intended  to  stay  a  day  or  two  in 

SLIGACIIAN. 

We  wanted  to  see  the  Cuchullins  and  the  inueh- 
talked-about  Loch  Coruisk.  But  here  we  found 
that  we  were  again  on  the  tourist  route  from  which 
we  had  gone  so  far  astray.  There  was  not  a  room 
to  be  had  in  the  inn.  It  was  full  of  immaculately 
dressed  young  ladies  and  young  Oxford  men,  all 
with  their  knickerbockers  at  the  same  degree  of 
bagginess,  their  stockings  turned  down  at  the  same 
angle.  We  might  have  thought  tliat  the  landlady 
objected  to  tramps  when  the  company  was  so  ele- 
gant, had  she  not  offered  to  put  us  up  in  the  draw- 
ing-room and  found  places  for  us  at  the  table-cThote 
luncheon.  The  talk  was  all  of  hotels  and  lochs 
and  glens  and  travels.  How  long  have  you  been 
in  Skye  ?  Is  this  your  first  visit  ?  Did  you  come 
by  Loch  Maree  ?  At  what  hotel  did  you  stay  in 
Oban  ?  But  there  was  not  a  word  about  cottages ; 
for  there  is  nothing  in  Sligachan,  or  near  it,  as  far 
as  we  could  see,  but  this  swell  hotel,  which  seemed 
very  good. 

Beds  in  the  drawing-room  meant  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  the   company.     We  did    not  hesitate. 


On  the  Islands.  161 

And  still  the  moors  stretched  out  before  us.  N"o 
one  who  has  not  tramped  in  Skye  can  imagine  its 
dreariness.  In  Portree,  a  miniature  Oban,  we  lost 
all  courage.  We  might  have  gone  back  to  Loch 
Coruisk.  We  might  have  tramped  to  take  a 
nearer  view  of  the  Old  Man  of  Storr,  which  we 
had  already  seen  in  the  distance.  We  might 
have  walked  to  Armadale,  or  steamed  to  Strome 
Ferry.  There  were,  in  fact,  many  things  we 
could  and  should  have  done ;  but  we  had  seen 
enough  of  the  miserable  life  in  the  islands — those 
great  deserts,  with  but  here  and  there  a  love- 
ly oasis  for  the  man  of  wealth.  Our  walks  had 
been  long ;  we  were  tired  physically  and  sick  men- 
tally. 

And  so,  early  one  morning,  we  took  the  boat  at" 
Portree  and  steamed  back  to  the  main-land ;  past 
Raasay,  where  Dr.  Johnson  stayed,  and  where  there 
was  a  big  house  with  beautiful  green  lawn  and  fine 
woods  ;  past  Glenelg,  where  we  should  have  landed 
to  follow  the  Doctor's  route,  but  the  prospect  of  a 
thirty  miles'  walk  to  reach  the  nearest  inn  made 
cowards  of  us ;  past  Armadale,  now  as  when  Pen- 
nant saw  it, "  a  seat,  beautifully  wooded,  gracing 
most  unexpectedly  this  almost  treeless  tract ;" 
past  one  island  of  hills  after  another;  and  thus 
into  the  Sound  of  Mull,  to  get  a  glimpse  of  Tober- 
mory  in  sunshine.  •  It  was  a  lovely  day  ;  sea  and 
sky  and  far  islands  blue,  the  water  like  glass ; 
11 


162  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

though,  before  it  had  come  to  an  end,  we  had 
twice  fled  to  the  cabin  from  heavy  showers. 
There  were  many  sight- seers  on  board,  and  we 
could  but  wonder  why.  The  women  read  novels, 
the  men  went  to  sleep.  But  they  had  done  their 
duty  —  they  had  been  to  Scotland  for  the  holi- 
days; they  had  probably  seen  the  Quiraing  and 
Dunvegan.  But  they  had  not  gone  our  way.  The 
coach  roads  are  those  from  which  the  least  misery 
is  visible. 

That  evening  Oban  did  its  best  for  us.  The 
sun  went  down  in  red  fire  beyond  Mull's  now  pur- 
pling hills.  And  as  the  burning  after-glow  cooled 
into  the  quiet  twilight,  we  looked  for  the  last  time 
on  the  island  of  Mull.  It  seemed  in  its  new  beau- 
ty to  have  found  peace  and  rest.  May  this  seem- 
ing have  become  reality  before  we  again  set  foot 
on  Hebridean  shores ! 


NOTE.  —  The  Crofters'  Act  of  1886  was  supposed  to  do 
away  with  the  crofters'  wrongs.  As  yet  it  has  accomplished 
little.  In  some  cases  the  Commissioners  appointed  for  the 
purpose  have  lowered  the  extortionate  rents  which  crofters 
have  been  starving  for  years  to  pay.  Now  that  agitation  in 
the  islands  has  made  it  absolutely  necessary  that  something 
should  be  done  for  the  people,  in  one  or  two  test  cases,  those 
clauses  of  the  act  which  prevent  landlords  evicting  tenants 
at  their  own  pleasure  have  been  enforced.  Beyond  this  the 
condition  of  the  people  is  absolutely  no  better  than  it  was 
before  the  act  was  passed.  They  have  not  enough  land  to 
support  them,  and  when  they  appeal  for  more,  their  land- 
lord answers,  as  Lady  Matheson  has  just  answered  her 
small  tenants  in  the  Lewis,  "  The  land  is  mine;  you  have 


On  the  Islands. 


163 


nothing  to  do  with  it."  Nothing  has  been  done  for  the  cot- 
ters who  have  no  land  at  all;  nothing  for  fishermen,  who  are, 
if  possible,  worse  off  at  the  end  of  the  fishing  season  than  they 
were  at  the  beginning.  The  money  appropriated  for  the 
building  of  piers  and  harbors  and  the  purchase  of  boats  has 
not  as  yet  been  put  to  its  proper  use. 


TO  THE  EAST  COAST,  AND  BACK 
AGAIN. 

ONE  always  hears  of  Highland  scenery  at  its 
best ;  one  usually  sees  it  at  its  worst.  We  found 
the  trip  from  Oban  to  Inverness  up  the  Caledonian 
Canal  as  tedious  as  it  is  said  to  be  charming.  The 
day  was  gray  and  misty  and  rainy.  In  the  first 
boat  we  sat  in  the  cabin,  in  the  second  under  an 
awning.  Occasionally  we  went  on  deck  to  look 
for  the  sights  of  the  journey. 

As  we  steamed  up  Loch  Linne  a  Scotchman 
pointed  out  Ben-Nevis. 

"  Well,"  said  J ,  critically,  "  if  you  were  to 

put  a  top  on  it,  it  might  make  a  fairly  decent 
mountain." 

After  that  wre  were  left  to  find  the  sights  for 
ourselves. 

The  day  would  have  been  unbearably  dull  but 
for  the  exertions  of  a  Mr.  Macdonell.  He  was,  I 
am  as  ashamed  to  say  as  he  seemed  to  be,  our  fel- 
low-countryman. He  did  not  look  in  the  least 
like  an  American,  nor  like  an  Englishman,  though 
his  ulster,  coat,  trousers,  collar,  necktie,  gloves,  and 
hat  were  all  so  English.  He  was  a  middle-aged 


168  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

man,  handsome,  and  gentlemanly  enough  until  he 
began  to  talk.  At  the  very  start  he  told  every- 
body on  board  in  general  and  each  individual  in 
particular  that  he  was  a  Macdonell.  As  all  the 
people  about  here  are  Macdonells,  no  one  was 
startled.  The  name  in  these  parts  is  rather  more 
common  than,  and  about  as  distinguished  as,  Smith 
in  the  Directory. 

"  I'm  a  Macdonell,"  he  said,  "  and  I'm  proud  of 
it.  It's  a  great  clan.  No  matter  what  our  nation- 
ality may  be  now,  sir,  we're  all  Macdonells  still. 
I'll  tell  you  the  way  we  do  in  our  clan.  Not  long 
ago  one  of  the  Macdonells  of  Lochaber  was  married. 
He  was  not  very  rich — he  had  about  £12,000  a  year 
perhaps — and  the  Macdonells  thought  it  would  be 
a  nice  thing  to  give  him  a  present  of  money  from 
Macdonells  all  over  the  world.  There  was  not  a 
Macdonell  who  did  not  respond.  I  was  in  Mel- 
bourne at  the  time,  and  I  was  proud  to  give  my 
guinea.  Now,  how  different  it  was  with  Grant, 
that  man  who  was  President  of  the  United  States. 
The  clan  Grant  tried  to  do  the  same  thing  when 
one  of  their  chiefs  family  was  married,  and  the 
factor  sent  to  this  Grant,  and  said  they  would  be 
very  proud  and  had  no  doubt  he  would  be  very 
glad  to  contribute  to  this  happy  occasion  in  the 
old  clan.  And  what  do  you  think  he  answered  ? 
He  indorsed  on  the  letter  sent  him — I  saw  it  my- 
self—  that  he  was  not  one  of  the  tenantry,  and 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       169 

therefore  would  not  contribute.  That  shows  what 
a  snob  he  was.  But  it's  very  different  with  the 
Macdonells.  I'll  tell  you  what  happened  to  me  the 
other  day  near  Banavie.  I  lost  one  of  my  gloves ; 
they  were  driving  gloves — expensive  gloves,  you 
know.  I  gave  the  odd  one  to  the  driver,  and  said 
if  he  could  find  the  other  he  would  have  a  pair. 
The  next  day  he  came  to  me  with  both  gloves. 
*  Sir,'  he  said, '  I  cannot  keep  them ;  I  too  am  a 
Macdonell !'  I  gave  him  the  other  glove  and  a 
guinea.  That  shows  the  fine  clannish  feeling." 

We  have  heard  that  there  is  a  proverb  about 
fools  and  Americans. 

Mr.  Macdonell  stood  on  the  upper  deck  to  look 
towards  the  country  of  the  Macdonells,  which  he 
could  not  see  through  the  mist.  He  took  out 
his  guide-book  and  read  poetry  and  facts  about  his 
clan,  to  two  American  girls,  until,  quite  audibly, 
they  pronounced  it  all  stuff  and  him  a  bore.  He 
praised  the  Macdonell  chiefs  to  Englishmen  until 
they  laughed  almost  in  his  face.  "  The  Duke  of 
New  York,"  they  called  him  before  evening.  He 
sang  the  praises  of  his  Macdonell  land  to  any  one 
who  would  listen.  "  I  like  it  better  than  Switzer- 
land or  our  own  country,"  he  said ;  "  I'm  coming 
back  next  year  to  rent  a  shooting-place.  But  the 
trouble  is  the  people  here  don't  like  us.  It's  the 
fault  of  men  like  Carnegie.  He  comes  and  gives 
them  £20,000  for  a  library.  And  then  what  does 


170  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

he  do?    He  makes  a  speech  against  their  queen. 
It's  shocking.     It's  atrocious." 

I  wonder  why  Americans,  as  soon  as  they  borrow 
the  Englishman's  clothes,  must  add  his  worst  traits 
to  their  own  faults.  "  That  kind  of  American." 
a  Londoner  on  board  said  to  us, "  has  all  the  arro- 
gance and  insolence  of  a  lord  combined  with  the 
ignorance  and  snobbishness  of  a  cad."  lie  was 
right.  Of  all  the  men  who  rent  the  great  deer 
forests  of  Scotland,  none  are  such  tyrants  as  the 
American  millionaires  who  come  over,  as  Mr. 
Macdonell  probably  will  next  summer,  for  the  shoot- 
ing. More  than  one  Scotchman  we  met  told  us 
so  plainly.  There  is  a  famous  case  where  the 
cruelty  of  an  American  sportsman,  who  plays  the 
laird  in  the  Highlands,  so  far  outdid  that  of  the 
real  laird  that  the  latter  came  forward  to  defend 
his  people  against  it !  Now  that  the  war  of  eman- 
cipation is  being  fought  from  one  end  of  Great 
Britain  to  the  other,  it  is  to  our  shame  that  there 
are  Americans  who  uphold  the  oppressors.  One 
might  think  we  struggled  for  freedom  at  home 
only  to  strive  against  it  abroad.  Mrs.  Stowe  could 
write  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  on  behalf  of  slaves  in 
the  United  States ;  in  Great  Britain  she  saw  only 
the  nobility  and  benevolence  of  the  slave-driver. 
From  the  plantations  of  the  South  there  never 
rose  such  a  cry  of  sorrow  and  despair  as  that  which 
rang  through  the  glens  and  straths  of  Sutherland 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       171 

when  men  were  driven  to  the  sea  to  make  room 
for  sheep.  And  yet  to  Mrs.  Stowe  this  inhuman 
chase  was  but  a  sublime  instance  of  the  benevolent 
employment  of  superior  wealth  and  power  in  short- 
ening the  struggle  of  advancing  civilization,  and 
elevating  in  a  few  years  a  whole  community  to  a 
point  of  education  and  material  prosperity  which, 
unassisted,  they  might  never  have  attained.  You 
might  as  well  call  the  slavery  of  negroes  a  sub- 
lime instance  of  the  power  of  traders  to  shorten 
the  natural  course  of  human  development,  since  if 
left  to  themselves  the  blacks  could  not  have  ad- 
vanced beyond  the  savage  state  in  which  they 
were  found.  I  fear  the  American  love  for  a  lord 
is  not  exaggerated,  if  even  Mrs.  Stowe  could  be 
blinded  by  it. 

There  was  little  to  break  the  monotony  of  the 
journey  except  the  Macdonells.  "  If  the  sun  only 
shone,"  Mrs.  Macdonell  explained,  "  there  would  be 
the  lights  and  shadows."  As  it  was,  however,  wa- 
ter and  sky  and  shores  were  of  uniform  grayness. 
Now  and  then  we  passed  the  ruins  of  an  old  castle. 
At  a  place  whose  name  I  have  forgotten  the  boat 
stopped  that  everybody  might  walk  a  mile  or  more 
to  see  a  water-fall.  It  may  have  been  our  loss  that 
we  did  not  go  with  the  rest ;  certainly  a  party  of 
Frenchmen  on  their  return  declared  it  une  cas- 
cade vraiment  charmante.  At  Fort  Augustus 
the  boat  was  three-quarters  of  an  hour  getting 


172  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

through  the  locks,  and  in  the  mean  time  enter- 
prising tourists  climbed  the  tower  of  the  new  Bene- 
dictine monastery,  which  stands  where  was  once 
the  old  fort.  We  went  instead  to  the  telegraph 
office,  and  secured  a  room  in  Inverness,  and  gave 
the  landlord  an  order  for  the  letters  we  hoped 
were  waiting  for  us  at  the  bank.  Young  Bene- 
dictines in  black  gowns,  like  students  of  the  Prop- 
aganda on  the  Pincian,  were  walking  out  two  by 
two. 

These  were  the  day's  excitements. 

As  we  neared  Inverness,  Mr.  Macdonell  was  again 
on  deck.  "  I  always  go  to  the  Caledonian  Hotel 
in  Inverness,"  he  told  us.  "What  I  like  is  to 
stay  at  the  best  hotels,  where  I  meet  the  society 
of  England  and  Scotland — the  real  society.  There's 
the  Royal  Hotel  in  Edinburgh ;  it  suits  me  be- 
cause you  are  sure  to  find  it  full  of  good  English 
and  Scotch  society.  I  must  always  have  the  best 
society.  Besides,  they're  very  good  hotels,  both 
of  them.  In  our  country  we  boast  of  the  products 
of  the  Chesapeake ;  but  we  have  nothing  so  de- 
licious, nothing  so  delicate,  as  the  fresh  herring 
they  will  serve  you  for  breakfast  at  the  Caledonian." 

As  we  drove  from  the  boat  to 


INVERNESS 


we  passed  the  stage  of  the  Caledonian  Hotel.    In  it 
sat  the  Macdonell  with  a  family  of  Jews,  and  an 


.      To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       173 

Englishman  and  his  daughter  who,  throughout  the 
journey,  had  shown  themselves  so  superior,  we 
should  not  wonder  some  day  to  find  them  behind 
the  counter  of  an  Oxford  Street  store.  They  were 
all  on  their  way  .to  mingle  with  the  real  society  of 
England  and  Scotland. 

It  probably  was  a  pleasure  to  Mr.  Macdonell  to 
find  that  the  tobacconist  next  to  the  hotel,  and  the 
dry  goods  merchant  but  a  few  doors  off,  were  his 
fellow-clansmen.  In  fact,  every  other  banner — I 
mean  sign — flung  out  on  the  outward  walls  of  In- 
verness bore  his  name. 

Our  social  pretensions  were  more  modest.  We 
went  to  the  Station  Hotel  for  comfort,  and  trusted 
to  luck  for  society.  In  the  great  hall  of  the  hotel 
we  first  realized  the  full  extent  of  our  shabbiness. 
Our  knapsacks  shrank  out  of  sight  of  porters  and 
maids.  The  proprietor  was  too  busy  distributing 
rooms  to  decently  dressed  travellers — the  most  gor- 
geous of  whom  gloried  in  his  allegiance  to  the 
Police  Gazette  of  Xew  York — to  notice  .us.  But 

as  he  paused  for  a  moment,  J asked  if  there 

were  any  letters  for  Mr.  Pennell.  "Where  is 
Mr.  Pennell  ?"  asked  the  proprietor,  with  interest. 
When  he  heard  where  he  was,  then  came  the 
transformation  scene.  Two  gentlemen  in  dress- 
coats,  each  carrying  a  diminutive  knapsack  pre- 
ceded us  up  the  stairs ;  two  gentlemen  in  dress- 
coats,  each  carrying  a  huge  bundle  of  letters,  the 


174  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides.  t 

accumulation  of  weeks,  followed  us.  We  felt  like 
a  lord  mayor's  procession,  but  we  did  not  look  it. 
We  were  led  into  the  best  bedroom,  but  before 
the  door  was  closed  we  thought  we  saw  disappoint- 
ment in  the  eyes  of  the  proprietor.  We  at  once 
consulted  the  tariff  on  the  wall  to  learn  what  it 
cost  to  send  a  telegram  in  Scotland.  We  can  only 
say  that  it  did  not  prove  very  expensive,  that  the 
hotel  was  very  good,  that  everybody  was  very  at- 
tentive, and  that  the  society  may  have  been  the 
best  for  all  we  knew. 

The  next  morning  we  started  on  foot,  all  our 
baggage  on  our  backs,  to  the«disgust  of  the  gentle- 
men in  dress-coats.  We  walked  at  a  good  pace  out 
of  the  town,  and  on  the  broad,  smooth  road  that 
leads  to  Culloden.  The  country  was  quiet  and  pas- 
toral, and  the  way,  in  places,  pleasant  and  shady. 
It  was  a  striking  contrast  to  the  western  wilderness 
from  which  we  had  just  come. 

But  twenty  miles  lay  between  us  and  Nairn ; 
like  Dr.  Johnson,  we  were  going  out  of  our  way 
to  see  Culloden  Moor  and  Cawdor  Castle.  The 
road  was  too  good.  It  set  us  thinking  again  of  a 
tricycle  on  which  we  could  travel  at  stimulating 
speed  over  country  monotonous  in  its  prosperous 
prettiness.  Walking  meant  steady  trudging  all 
day,  and  a  hasty  glance  at  castle  and  moor  when 
we  came  to  them. 

It  was  unbearable.     Weeks  of  experience  had 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       175 

taught  us  all  the  drudgery  of  tramping,  none  of 
its  supposed  delights.  We  asked  people  we  met 
if  there  was  a  cycle  agent  in  Inverness.  No  one 
knew.  Then  the  trees  by  the  road-side  gave  place 
to  open  country  with  waving  wheat-fields  ;  and  oh, 
how  hot  it  grew !  Peddlefs  whom  we  had  passed — 
the  only  people,  besides  ourselves,  we  saw  tramping 
in  Scotland — overtook  and  passed  us.  Two  men 
went  by  on  bicycles.  How  cool  and  comfortable 
they  looked !  How  hot  and  dirty  and  dusty  and 
miserable  we  felt !  This  was  too  much. 

"  Confound  this  walking !  If  ever  I  walk  again !" 

said  J ;  and,  almost  within  sight  of  Culloden, 

he  turned.  After  looking  over  to  where  I  knew 
the  moor  must  be,  I  meekly  followed  him,  and  in 
silence  we  went  back  to  Inverness. 

The  roads  about  here  being  particularly  good, 
there  was  not  a  cycle  agent  in  the  town.  There 
was  no  getting  a  machine  for  love  or  money.  It 
was  now  too  late  to  attempt  to  walk  to  Nairn. 
There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  train  it.  In  the 
interval  of  waiting  we  saw  Inverness.  It  is  a 
pretty  city,  with  a  wide  river  flowing  through  it, 
many  bridges — one  with  a  great  stone  archway — a 
new  cathedral,  and  a  battlemented,  turreted  castle 
high  above  the  river.  Clothes  dry  on  the  green 
bank  that  slopes  down  to  the  water's  edge,  women 
in  white  caps  go  and  come  through  the  streets, 
which,  with  their  gabled  houses,  show  that  curious 


1 76  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

French  feeling  found  all  over  the  East  of  Scot- 
land, and  even  the  costumes  of  the  women  help 
to  carry  it  out. 

In  Inverness,  and  in  fact  all  the  way  to  Fraser- 
burgh,  J—  -  made  many  notes  and  sketches,  the 
best,  he  says,  of  onr  journey.  All  but  a  few  have 
been  lost,  and  so  the  world  will  never  enjoy  them. 
This  is  sad,  but  true.  If  any  one  should  happen 
to  find  the  sketch-book  he  need  not  return  it  in 

hopes  of  a  reward.  J has  no  use  for  it  at  this 

moment.  In  fact,  the  finder  had  better  keep  it ; 
it  may  be  valuable  some  day. 

When  the  train  reached 


NAIRN 


"Well,"   said    J ,   in    triumph,    "we've    got 

through  a  day's  work  in  half  an  hour;"  and  we 
dropped  our  knapsacks  at  the  hotel  and  set  out 
for  Cawdor,  which  is  five  miles  from  the  town. 

The  day  so  far  had  been  fine.  Once  we  were 
on  the  road  again  the  sun  went  behind  the  clouds, 
mist  fell  over  the  country  before  us.  A  lady  in  a 
dog-cart  warned  us  of  rain,  and  offered  us  a  lift.  To 
make  up  for  the  morning's  weakness,  we  refused 
heroically.  There  was  nothing  by  the  way  but 
broad  fields  of  grain,  which  seemed  broader  after 
the  wretched  little  patches  of  Skye  and  Harris, 
and  large  farm-houses,  larger  by  comparison  with 
Hebridean  hovels.  When  the  roofs  and  gables  of 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       177 

the  castle  came  in  sight,  had  we  had  our  Macbeth 
at  our  fingers'  ends,  I  have  no  doubt  we  might 
have  made  an  appropriate  quotation.  A  Jong 
fence  separated  two  fields ;  on  each  post  sat  a  sol- 
emn rook,  and  hundreds  more  made  black  the  near 
grass.  But  we  did  not  call  them  birds  of  ill-omen 
and  speak  of  the  past  as  we  should  have  done ; 
J only  said  it  was  right  to  find  so  many  caw- 
ing things  at  the  gate  of  Cawdor  Castle. 

I  wish  that  we  had  found  nothing  worse.  Just 
as  we  reached  it  the  mist  turned  to  heavy  rain. 
This  is  the  depressing  side  of  sight-seeing  in  Scot- 
land ;  you  must  take  your  holidays  in  water-proofs. 

J made  several  sketches,  for  the  rain  poured 

in  such  torrents  our  stay  was  long.  We  stood 
under  the  old  gate-way  and  at  the  window  of  the 
porter's  lodge.  The  sketches  were  very  charming, 
very  beautiful,  but  they  are  lost !  We  walked 
about  in  the  rain  and  looked  at  the  castle  from 
every  side.  But  as  everybody  who  has  travelled  in 
Scotland  has  described  Cawdor,  there  is  no  special 
reason  why  I  should  do  it  again.  The  sketches 
would  have  been  original. 

The  most  provoking  part  of  it  was  that  we  had 
scarce  left  the  castle  a  mile  behind  when  the  rain 
became  mist  again ;  at  the  third  mile-stone  we 
were  once  more  in  a  dry  world. 

Boswell  called  Nairn  "  a  miserable  place."     Dr. 

Johnson  said  next  to  nothing  about  it.     Perhaps 
12 


178  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

the  people  laughed  at  them  as  they  did  at  ns. 
"We  thought  their  manners  miserable,  though  their 
town  now  is  decent  enough.  It  is  long  and  nar- 
row, stretching  from  the  rail  way -station  to  the 
sea.  After  the  hotels  and  shops,  we  came  to  the 
fishermen's  quarter.  The  houses  were  mostly 
new ;  a  few  turned  old  gables  and  chimneys  to 
the  street.  Women  in  white  caps,  with  great  bas- 
kets on  their  backs,  strode  homeward  in  the  twi- 
light. Everywhere  brown  nets  were  spread  out 
to  dry,  boats  lay  along  the  sands,  beyond  was  the 
sea,  and  the  smell  of  the  fish  was  over  it  all. 

The  next  morning  we  learned  from  the  maid 
that  Macbeth's  blasted  heath  was  but  a  few  miles 
from  Nairn ;  all  the  theatricals  went  there,  she 
said.  We  made  a  brave  start ;  but  bravery  gave 
out  with  the  first  mile.  Walking  was  even  more 
unbearable  than  it  had  been  the  day  before.  There 
could  be  nothing  more  depressing  than  to  walk  on 
a  public  highway  through  a  well-cultivated  coun- 
try under  a  hot  sun.  Already,  when  we  came  to 
the  near  village  of  Auldearn,  we  had  outwalked 
interest  in  everything  but  our  journey's  end.  We 
would  not  go  an  extra  step  for  the  monuments  the 
guide-book  directs  the  tourist  to  see,  though  the 
graveyard  was  within  sight  of  the  road. 

Macbeth  seems  to  have  shared  the  fate  of  proph- 
ets in  their  own  country.  We  asked  a  man  pass- 
ing with  a  goat  the  distance  to  Macbeth's  Hill,  as 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        179 

it  is  called  on  the  map.  He  didna  know,  he  an- 
swered. But  presently  he  ran  after  us.  Was  the 
gentleman  we  spoke  of  a  farmer?  Another  man, 
however,  knew  all  about  it.  He  had  never  been 
to  the  top  of  the  hill ;  he  had  been  told  there  were 
trees  up  there,  and  that  it  wasn't  different  from 
the  other  hills  around.  And  yet  he  had  heard  peo- 
ple came  great  distances  to  see  it.  He  supposed 
we  had  travelled  far  just  to  go  up  the  hill.  He 
knew  from  our  talk,  many  words  of  which  he 
couldna  understand,  that  we  were  no  from  this 
part  of  the  country.  But  then  sometimes  he 
couldna  understand  the  broad  Scotch  of  the  peo- 
ple in  Aberdeenshire.  There  were  some  people 
hereabouts  who  could  talk  only  Gaelic.  They  had 
been  turned  off  the  Western  Islands,  and  had  set- 
tled here  years  ago,  but  they  still  talked  only  the 
Gaelic. 

He  went  our  way  for  half  a  mile  or  less,  and  he 
walked  with  us.  His  clothes  were  ragged,  his 
feet  bare,  and  over  his  shoulders  was  slung  a  small 
bundle  done  up  in  a  red  handkerchief.  In  the  last 
three  years,  he  said,  he  had  had  but  two  or  three 
days'  work.  Work  was  hard  to  get.  Here  rents 
were  high,  farmers  complained,  and  this  year  the 
crops  were  ruined  because  of  the  long  drought. 
He  did  think  at  times  of  going  to  America.  He 
had  a  sister  who  had  gone  to  live  in  Pittsburg. 
It  might  be  a  good  thing.  There  are  Scotchmen 


1 80  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

who  have  done  well  in  Pittsburg.  He  left  us  with 
minute  directions.  The  hill,  though  not  far  from 
the  road,  which  now  went  between  pine  woods 
and  heather,  could  not  be  seen  from  it.  We  came 
to  the  point  at  which  we  should  have  turned  to 
the  blasted  heath. 

"  It's  a  blasted  nuisance,"  J said,  and  we 

kept  straight  on  to  the  nearest  railway-station. 

This  was  Brodie.  The  porters  told  us  there  was 
a  fine  castle  within  a  ten  minutes'  walk,  and  a  train 
for  Elgin  in  fifteen  minutes.  We  waited  for  the 
train. 

We  were  so  tired,  so  disgusted,  that  everything 
put  us  out  of  patience.  Even  a  small  boy  who  had 
walked  with  us  earlier  in  the  morning  to  show  us 
the  way,  simply  by  stopping  when  we  stopped  and 
starting  when  we  started,  had  driven  us  almost  fran- 
tic. I  mention  this  to  show  how  utterly  wearisome 
a  walking  tour  through  beautiful  country  can  be. 

At  the  town  of 

ELGIN 

we  were  in  the  humor  to  moralize  on  modern 
degeneracy  among  the  ruins.  A  distillery  is  now 
the  near  neighbor  of  the  cathedral.  Below  the 
broken  walls,  still  rich  with  beautiful  carving, 
new  and  old  gravestones,  as  at  lona,  stand  side  by 
side.  In  nave  and  transepts  knights  lie  on  old 
tombstones,  under  canopies  carved  with  leaves  and 
flowers;  here 'and  there  in  the  graveyard  without 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        181 

are  moss-grown  slabs  with  the  death's-head  and 
graceful  lettering  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  near 
by  are  ugly  blocks  from  the  modern  stone-mason. 
The  guide-book  quotes  some  of  the  old  inscrip- 
tions ;  but  it  omits  one  of  late  date,  which  should, 
however,  receive  the  greatest  honor — that  of  the 
man  who  cared  for  the  ruins  with  reverence  and 
love  until  the  Government  took  them  in  charge. 
These  ruins  are  very  beautiful.  Indeed,  nowhere 
does  the  religious  vandalism  of  the  past  seem  more 
monstrous  than  in  Scotland.  The  Government 
official  asked  us  to  write  our  names  in  the  Visitors' 
Book ;  he  made  it  seem  a  compliment  by  saying 
that  it  was  not  everybody's  name  he  wanted.  We 
thought  him  a  man  of  much  greater  intelligence 
than  the  Glasgow  verger.  He  could  see,  he  said, 
that  J—  -  knew  something  about  cathedrals  and 
architecture. 

We  found  nothing  else  of  interest  in  Elgin.  It 
had  a  prosperous  look,  and  we  saw  not  a  trace  of 
the  old  timbered  houses  with  projecting  upper 
stories  of  which  Dr.  Johnson  writes.  The  re- 
mainder of  our  stay  we  spent  in  a  restaurant  near 
the  station,  where  we  talked  politics  with  a  farmer. 
He  lectured  us  on  free-trade.  Scotch  farmers  cry 
for  protection,  he  said,  but  they  don't  know  what 
it  means.  Free-trade  is  good  for  the  bulk  of  the 
people,  and  what  would  protection  do  for  the 
farmer?  Nothing!  If  he  got  higher  prices,  the 
12* 


182  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

landlord  would  say,  Now  you  can  afford  to  pay  me 
higher  rent,  and  he  would  pocket  the  few  shillings' 
difference. 

"We  talked  with  many  other  farmers  in  the  east 
of  Scotland.  Sometimes  we  journeyed  with  them 
in  railway  -  carriages  ;  sometimes  we  breakfasted 
and  dined  with  them  in  hotels.  They  all  had 
much  to  say  about  protection  and  free-trade,  and 
we  found  that  Henry  George  had  been  among 
them.  Their  ideas  of  his  doctrine  of  the  national- 
ization of  the  land  were  at  times  curious  and  orig- 
inal. I  remember  a  farmer  from  Aberdeenshire 
who  told  us  that  he  believed  in  it  thoroughly,  and 
then  explained  that  it  would  give  each  man  per- 
mission, if  he  had  money  enough,  to  buy  out  his 
landlord. 

After  our  lunch  at  Elgin  we  again  got  through 
a  day's  work  in  less  than  an  hour.  We  went  by 

train  to 

BUCKIE, 

a  place  of  which  we  had  never  heard  before  that 

afternoon.     How  J happened  to  'buy  tickets 

for  it  I  cannot  explain,  since  he  never  made  it 
quite  clear  to  me.  We  found  it  a  large  and  ap- 
parently thriving  fishing  town,  with  one  long  line 
of  houses  low  on  the  shore,  another  above  on  the 
hill,  and  a  very  good  hotel,  the  name  of  which  I 
am  not  sure  we  knew  at  the  time ;  certainly  we 
do  not  remember  it  now. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        185 

It  was  at  Buckie  that  J made  several  of  the 

best  sketches  in  the  lost  sketch-book  in  the  evening 
as  we  watched  the  boats  sail  silently  out  from  the 
harbor.  The  sun  had  just  set.  The  red  light  of 
the  after-glow  shone  upon  the  water.  Against  it, 
here  and  there,  the  brown  sails  stood  out  in  strong 
relief.  Other  boats  lay  at  anchor  in  the  cool  gray 
of  the  harbor. 

In  the  morning  we  made  a  new  start  on  foot. 
Now  and  then,  for  a  short  distance,  the  road  went 
inland  across  treeless,  cultivated  country ;  but  the 
greater  part  of  the  time  it  lay  near  the  sea,  and 
kept  wandering  in  and  out  of  little  fishing  villages, 
in  each  of  which  the  lost  sketch-book  came  into 
play.  They  were  all  much  alike  ;  there  was  usual- 
ly the  harbor,  where  the  fishing-boats  were  moored, 
some  with  brown  sails  hung  out  to  dry  and  flapping 
slowly  in  the  breeze ;  others  with  long  lines  of 
floats  stretched  from  mast  to  mast ;  and  as  it  was 
not  only  low  tide  but  near  the  end  of  the  fishing 
season,  all  were  drawn  up  in  picturesque  masses  in 
the  foreground,  the  light  of  sea  and  sky  bright  and 
glittering  behind  them.  Carts  full  of  nets,  men 
and  women  with  huge  bundles  of  them  on  their 
backs,  were  always  on  their  way  either  up  or  down 
the  hill  at  whose  foot  the  village  nestled ;  or  on 
the  level  at  its  top  the  nets  were  spread  like  great 
snares,  not  for  birds,  but  for  any  one  who  tried  to 
walk  across  them.  Boxes  and  barrels  of  salted  fish 


1MJ 


Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 


were  piled  along  the  street.  In  the  air  was  the 
strong  smell  of  herrings.  In  every  village  new 
houses  were  being  or  had  just  been  built,  but  the 
soft  gray  smoke  hovering  above  the  roofs  toned 
down  their  aggressive  newness.  In  their  midst 
was  the  plain  white  kirk. 


There  were  so  many  villages  that 
we  could  not  complain  of  monotony ; 
and  then  sometimes,  on  the  stretch  of  beach  be- 
yond, dismantled  boats  in  various  stages  of  decline 
were  pulled  up  out  of  reach  of  the  tide.  Some- 
times on  the  near  links  men  were  playing  golf. 
Once  we  passed  three,  each  putting  his  little  white 
ball  on  a  bit  of  turf.  They  were  very  serious  about 
it.  "  Xow  to  business,"  we  heard  one  say  as  we 
went  by.  But  it  grew  very  hot  towards  noon,  and 
in  the  heat  our  first  enthusiasm  melted.  When 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Sack  Again.        189 

Cullen  came  in  sight  we  were  again  declaring  that 
nothing  would  induce  us  to  walk  another  step. 

However,  a  hearty  lunch  changed  our  minds. 
The  truth  is,  we  hated  to  give  in.  Though  we 
were  quite  certain  we  would  never  tramp  again, 
we  were  unwilling  to  confess  our  one  walk  a  fail- 
ure. At  the  hotel  we  were  told  that  the  road  to 
Banff,  our  next  stopping-place,  kept  inland,  but  the 
landlady  thought  that  to  the  nearest  village  at  least 
there  was  a  path  by  the  shore.  A  man  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  town  tried  to  dissuade  us  from  going 
that  way ;  there  was  such  a  brae  to  be  climbed,  he 
said.  But  there  seemed  no  doubt  about  the  path. 
When  we  persisted,  he  walked  back  with  us  to  di- 
rect us  the  better,  J—  -  talking  to  him  about  the 
brae  as  if  he  had  never  heard  of  a  hill  in  his  life, 
the  man  describing  the  difficulties  before  us  as  if 
ours  was  an  Alpine  expedition.  The  hill  was  steep 
enough.  At  the  top  there  was  no  path,  but  instead 
a  field  of  tall  prickly  furze,  through  which  we 
waded.  Oh,  the  misery  of  that  five  minutes'  walk ! 
At  every  step  we  were  stung  and  pricked  by  hun- 
dreds of  points  sharper  than  needles.  And  after 
that  we  skirted  wheat  and  turnip  fields,  because 
when  we  tried  to  cross  them,  as  we  were  not  sports- 
men, there  was  some  one  near  at  hand  to  stop  us. 
"We  went  up  and  down  ravines,  and  picked  our  way 
through  tall  grass  at  the  very  edge  of  sheer  cliffs. 
The  afternoon  was  hotter  than  the  morning  had 


190  Our  Journey  to  the 

been.  A  warm  haze  hung  over  the  level  stretch 
of  country  and  the  distant  hills.  The  sky  seemed 
to  have  fallen  down  upon  the  sea ;  there  was  not  a 
line  to  mark  where  it  met  the  water.  The  few 


BIT  OF  MACDUFF. 

brown-sailed  boats  looked  as  if  they  were  forcing 
their  way  between,  holding  up  the  heavens  on 
their  masts. 

In  one  place,  on  a  high  rock  jutting  out  into  the 
sea,  was  a  low  broken  wall  of  rough  masonry,  all 
that  is  left  of  Findlater  Castle. 

There  was  no  use  in  trying  to  keep  up  any  lon- 
ger. Our  backs  ached,  our  shoulders  were  cut ; 
we  were  hot,  dusty,  exhausted,  and,  in  a  wrord,  at 
the  end  of  our  physical  and  moral  forces.  This 
scramble  on  the  cliffs  ended  our  walking  tour. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Hack  Again.        191 

At  Sandend  we  took  the  train  for  Banff;  but 
first  we  went  down  to  the  shore ;  for  Sandend  was 
a  picturesque  little  village,  with  all  its  gables  turn- 
ed towards  the  sea,  big  black  boats  on  the  beach, 
rocks  beyond,  and  a  pretty  blue  bay  of  its  own. 
Three  artists  had  left  their  easels  to  eat  buns  out 
of  a  brown-paper  bag  and  drink  beer  out  of  bot- 
tles, under  the  shade  of  one  of  the  boats.  J , 

having  already  learned  the  exclusiveness  of  British 
artists,  took  out  his  sketch-book  at  a  safe  distance. 
He  only  spoke  to  them  to  ask  the  way  to  the  sta- 
tion. He  did  not  dare  to  talk  about  work. 

A  little  farther  on  we  again  asked  the  way,  this 
time  of  a  girl  hanging  up  clothes.  J 's  ques- 
tions and  her  answers  were  typical  of  t  many  con- 
versations, bad  for  one's  temper,  that  we  held  on 
the  east  coast. 

"  Where  is  the  railway-station  ?" 

"  What  station  2" 

"Where  the  train  comes  in." 

"  There ;"  and  she  pointed  to  a  house  beyond 
the  village. 

"  How  do  you  get  there  ?" 

"  By  the  road." 

"  Can  you  go  up  by  the  hill  ?" 

"Yes." 

"  Which  is  better  ?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  Which  is  shorter  ?" 


1 92  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

"Up  the  bill." 

We  started  up  the  hill,  but  there  was  no  path. 
"  There  is  no  path,"  we  said  to  her. 
"  No,  there's  no  path." 
We  came  to 

BANFF 

late  in  the  afternoon,  just  as  the  fishing- boats 
were  putting  out  to  sea,  one  beyond  another  on 
the  gray  water,  the  farthest  but  faint  specks  on 
the  horizon.  The  best  thing  about  Banff  is  that 
in  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  you  can  be  out  of  it 
and  in  Macduff.  The  shore  here  makes  a  great 
curve.  On  one  point  is  Banff,  on  the  other  Mac- 
duff;  half-way  between,  a  many -arched  bridge 
spans  the  river  Deveron,  and  close  by  the  big 
house  of  the  Earl  of  Fife  shows  through  the  trees 
of  his  park.  High  on  the  hill  of  Macduff  stands 
the  white  kirk ;  it  overlooks  the  town,  with  its 
many  rows  of  fishermen's  houses,  and  the  harbor, 
where  the  black  masts  rise  far  above  the  gray 
walls,  and  the  fishermen  spread  out  their  nets  to 
dry,  and  the  dark-sailed  boats  are  always  coming 
and  going,  and  boys  paddle  in  the  twilight.  And 
if  you  go  to  the  far  end  of  the  harbor,  where  the 
light-house  is,  you  look  to  the  spires  and  chimneys 
and  roofs  of  Banff  climbing  up  their  hill-side,  and 
beyond  to  a  shadowy  point  of  land  like  a  pale 
gray  cloud-bank  on  the  water. 

It  was  easy  to  see  what  they  thought  of  us  at 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        193 

the  Fife  Arms,  where  we  stayed  in  Banff.  "We 
were  given  our  breakfast  with  the  nurse  and  chil- 
dren of  an  A.  R.  A.,  while  the  great  man  break- 
fasted in  state  in  a  near  dining-room.  Thev  ate 


KEAR  BANFF. 


very  like  ordinary  children,  but  their  clothes 
showed  them  to  be  little  boys  and  girls  of  ees- 
thetic  distinction.  I  fear,  however,  we  were  not 
properly  impressed. 

There  was  no  doubt  that  now  our  walking  was 
13 


194  Oar  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

all  done.  "We  asked  about  the  stage  for  Fraser- 
burgh,  as  if  staging  with  us  was  a  matter  of  course. 
It  was  a  relief  not  to  begin  the  day  by  strapping 
heavy  knapsacks  to  our  backs.  The  hours  of  wait- 
ing were  spent  partly  in  strolling  through  the 
streets  of  Banff,  where  here  and  there  is  an  old 
gray  house  with  pretty  turret  at  its  corner,  or 
quaint  old  inscription  with  coat  of  arms  or  figures 
let  into  its  walls ;  partly  in  sitting  on  the  beach 
looking  out  on  a  hot  blue  sea. 

But  hot  as  it  was  in  the  morning,  a  sharp,  cold 
wind  was  blowing  when,  at  three  o'clock,  we  took 
our  seats  in  the  little  old-fashioned  stage  that  runs 
between  Banff  and  Fraserburgh.  Stage  and  coach- 
man and  passengers  seemed  like  a  page  out  of 
Dickens  transposed  to  Scotland.  Inside  was  a 
very  small  boy,  put  there  by  a  fat  woman  in  black, 
and  left,  with  many  exhortations  and  a  couple  of 
buns,  to  make  the  journey  alone ;  opposite  to  him 
sat  a  melancholy  man  who  saw  but  ruin  staring 
in  the  face  of  farmers  and  fishermen  alike.  At 
every  corner  in  Banff  and  Macduff  we  stopped 
for  more  passengers,  until  the  stage,  elastic  as  it 
seemed,  was  full  to  overflowing,  and  we  took  ref- 
uge on  the  top.  Here  the  seats  were  crowded  with 
men,  their  heads  tied  up  in  scarfs.  The  coach- 
man was  carrier  as  well,  and  at  different  points  in 
the  open  country  women  and  children  waited  by 
the  road  to  give  him,  or  to  take  from  him,  bundles 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       197 

and  boxes  and  letters.  He  was  the  typical  cheery 
carrier.  He  had  a  word  for  everybody,  even  for 
a  young  man  who  dropped  his  wheelbarrow  to  flap 
his  arms  and  greet  us  with  a  vacant  smile.  He 
was  a  puir  thing,  the  driver  explained,  who  went 
wrong  only  four  years  ago.  He  was  the  third  we 
had  seen  in  two  days. 

Many  of  the  carrier's  jokes  we  lost.  A  commer- 
cial traveller,  who  sat  next  to  us,  supposed  we  could 
not  understand  some  of  the  expressions  hereabouts. 
He  might  better  have  said  we  could  not  understand 
the  language.  We  could  make  out  enough,  how- 
ever, to  find  that  one  joke  went  a  long  way.  A 
man  in  the  front  seat,  trying  to  light  his  pipe  in 
the  wind,  set  off  the  whole  box  of  matches.  "  That's 
extravagance,"  said  the  carrier ;  and  when  another 
box  was  handed  to  the  man,  he  told  him  that  these 
were  safety  matches — it  took  only  one  to  light  a 
pipe  ;  and  this  he  kept  saying  over  and  over  again, 
with  many  chuckles,  for  the  next  half-hour.  We 
had  a  specimen,  too,  of  Scotch  humor.  At  one 
stopping-place  the  commercial  traveller  got  down 
and  went  into  the  public-house.  A  family  party 
scrambled  up  and  filled  every  seat,  his  with  the 

rest.     J remonstrated ;   but  the  man  of  the 

party  answered  that  he  paid  his  money  for  a  seat 
as  well  as  anybody  else.     "  An  empty  seat 's  nae- 
body's  seat,"  he  argued,  and  carrier  and  passengers 
roared  at  his  fun. 
13* 


198  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

The  country  was  dreary,  for  all  its  cultivation. 
The  fields  were  without  tree  or  hedge  to  break 
their  monotony.  The  villages  were  full  of  new 
houses.  There  was  nothing  striking  or  picturesque 
until  we  came  within  sight  of  Fraserburgh.  Far 
across  a  level  stretch  we  first  saw  it,  its  spires  rising 
high  above  gray  and  red  roofs.  The  near  meadows 
were  dark  with  fishing-nets ;  in  places  fishermen 
were  at  work  spreading  them  over  the  grass ;  and 
we  began  to  pass  carts  heavily  laden  with  their 
brown  masses,  and  men  and  women  bent  under  the 
same  burdens. 

FRASERBURGH. 

We  walked  out  after  supper.  Rain  was  falling, 
and  the  evening  was  growing  dark.  Down  by  the 
harbor  carts  were  still  going  and  coming;  men 
were  still  busy  with  their  nets.  Along  the  quay 
was  a  succession  of  basins,  and  these  opened  into 
others  beyond.  All  were  crowded  with  boats,  and 
their  thickly  clustered  masts  seemed,  in  the  gath- 
ering shadows,  like  a  forest  of  branchless,  leafless 
trees.  One  by  one  lights  were  hung  out.  On  the 
town  side  of  the  quay,  in  crypt-like  rooms  and  un- 
der low  sheds,  torches  flamed  and  flared  against  a 
background  of  darkness.  Their  strong  light  fell 
upon  women  clothed  in  strange  stuffs  that  glis- 
tened and  glittered,  their  heads  bound  with  white 
cloths.  They  were  bending  over  shiny,  ever-shift- 
ing masses  piled  at  their  feet,  and  chanting  a  wild 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       201 

Gaelic  song  that  rose  and  fell  with  the  wailing  of 
all  savage  music.  As  we  first  saw  them,  from  a 
distance,  they  might  have  been  so  many  sorceresses 
at  their  magic  rites.  When  we  drew  near  we 
found  that  they  were  but  the  fish-carers'  gutters 
and  packers  at  work.  Thanks  to  Cable  and  Lafca- 
dio  Hearn,  we  know  something  of  the  songs  of 
work  at  home;  but  who  in  England  cares  about 
the  singing  in  these  fishing  towns — singing  which 
is  only  wilder  and  weirder  than  that  of  the  cotton 
pressers  of  Louisiana?  To  the  English  literary 
man,  however — the  Charles  Reades  are  the  excep- 
tions— I  fear  the  gutters  would  be  but  nasty,  dirty 
fisher  persons.  Now  and  then  groups  of  these 
women  passed  us,  walking  with  long  strides,  their 
arms  swinging,  and  their  short  skirts  and  white- 
bound  heads  shining  through  the  sombre  streets. 
Over  the  town  was  the  glow  of  the  many  fires. 

In  the  morning  there  was  less  mystery,  but  not 
less  picturesqueness.  We  were  up  in  time  to  go 
to  the  harbor  with  the  fishermen's  wives,  and  watch 
the  boats  come  in.  Everything  was  fresli  after  a 
night  of  rain.  It  was  still  early,  and  the  sun  sent 
a  path  of  gold  across  the  sea  just  where  the  boats 
turned  on  their  last  tack  homeward.  Each  brown 
sail  was  set  in  bold  relief  against  the  shining  east, 
and  then  slowly  lowered,  as  the  fishermen  with 
their  long  poles  pushed  the  boats  into  the  already 
crowded  harbor.  At  once  nets  were  emptied  of 


202  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

the  fish,  which  lay  gleaming  like  silver  through 
the  brown  meshes.  Women  and  boys  came  to  h'll 
baskets  with  the  fresh  herrings ;  carts  were  loaded 
with  them.  In  other  boats  men  were  hanging  up 
their  floats  and  shaking  out  their  nets.  The  water 
was  rich  with  the  many  black  and  brown  reflec- 
tions, only  brightened  here  and  there  by  lines  of 
bine  or  purple  or  white  from  the  distinguishing 
rings  of  color  on  each  mast.  There  was  a  never- 
ending  stream  of  men  and  carts  passing  along  the 
quay.  Many  fishermen  wiih  their  bags  were  on 
their  way  to  the  station,  for  the  fishing  season  was 
almost  over.  So  they  said.  But  when  one  thou- 
sand boats  came  in,  and  twenty  thousand  fisher-folk 
were  that  day  in  Fraserburgh,  to  us  it  looked  little 
like  the  end.  In  all  this  busy  place  we  heard  no 
English.  Only  Gaelic  was  spoken,  as  if  we  were 
once  more  in  the  Western  Islands. 

It  was  the  same  in  the  streets.  The  day's  work 
in  the  curing-houses  was  just  about  to  begin.  Girls 
and  women  in  groups  of  threes  and  fours  were 
walking  towards  them.  In  the  morning  light  we 
could  see  that  the  greater  number  were  young. 
All  were  neat  and  clean,  with  hair  carefully  part- 
ed and  well  brushed,  little  shawls  over  their  shoul- 
ders, but  nothing  on  their  heads.  They  carried 
their  working  clothes  under  their  arms,  and  kept 
knitting  as  they  walked.  Like  the  men,  they  all 
talked  Gaelic. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        205 

When*  they  got  to  work,  we  found  that  those 
strange  stuffs  which  had  glistened  in  the  torch-light 
were  aprons  and  bibs  smeared  with  scales  and 
slime,  that  the  white  head-dresses  were  worn  only 
for  cleanliness,  that  the  shining  masses  at  their 
feet  were  but  piles  of  herring.  I  have  never  seen 
women  work  so  hard  or  so  fast.  Their  arms,  as 
they  seized  the  fish,  gutted  them,  and  threw  them 
in  the  buckets,  moved  with  the  regularity  and  the 
speed  of  machines.  Indeed,  there  could  not  be  a 
busier  place  than  Fraserburgh.  All  day  long  the 
boats  kept  coming  in,  nets  were  emptied,  fish 
carted  away.  The  harbor,  the  streets,  the  fields 
beyond  where  nets  were  taken  to  dry,  the  curing- 
houses,  were  alike  scenes  of  industry.  If  the  wom- 
en put  down  their  knives,  it  was  only  to  take  up 
their  knitting.  And  yet  these  men  and  women, 
working  incessantly  by  day  and  by  night,  were 
almost  all  Western  Islanders — the  people  who,  we 
are  told,  are  so  slovenly  and  so  lazy  !  No  one  who 
comes  with  them  to  the  east  coast  for  the  fishing 
season  will  ever  again  believe  in  the  oft-repeated 
lies  about  their  idleness. 

There  were  no  signs  of  rest  until  Saturday  even- 
ing. Then  no  boats  went  out,  and  the  harbor  and 
curing-houses  were  deserted.  The  streets  were  full 
of  men  and  women  walking  about  for  pleasure. 
The  greatest  crowd  was  in  the  market-place,  where 
a  few  "cheap  Jacks"  drove  their  trade.  Two, 


200  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

who  dealt  in  china,  as  if  to  make  up  for  their  poor 
patter,  threw  cups  and  saucers  recklessly  into  the 
air,  breaking  them  with  great  clatter,  while  the 
women  and  girls  they  had  attracted  stood  by  and 
bought  nothing. 

The  fishermen  had  gathered  about  a  third,  who 
sold  cheap  and  tawdry  ornaments,  but  who  could 
patter.  When  we  first  came  near  he  was  holding 
up  six  imitation  gold  watch-chains,  and  offering 
the  buyers  prizes  into  the  bargain.  "  O  ye  men 
of  little  faith  !" — shaking  his  fist  at  them — "  can't 
any  of  you  favor  me  with  a  shillin'  ?  You  don't 
want  'em,  gen'lemen  ?  Then  there'll  be  smashin' 
of  teeth  and  tearin'  of  hair.  Glory !  glory  hallylu- 
jah !"  All  this,  I  regret  to  say,  was  interspersed 
with  stories  that  do  not  bear  repetition.  But  he 
sold  his  watch-chains  without  trouble.  "  And  no\v, 
gen'lemen,  for  any  of  you  that  wants  to  take  home 
a  present  to  your  wife  and  chil'ren,  here's  an 
album.  It  'd  adorn  a  nobleman's  mansion,  and 
wouldn't  disgrace  a  fisherman's  cottage.  It's 
bound  in  moroccer  and  stamped  with  gold,  and  '11 
hold  many  pictures.  I'll  only  sell  half  a  dozen, 
and  it's  the  very  thing  you  wants.  You'll  have 
one  ?  Well,  sir,  I  can't  reach  you,  but  these  gen'le- 
men '11  pass  it  along." 

And  then  he  began  again  with  the  stories  and 
the  Scripture  until  he  had  sold  out  all  his  stock 
of  albums  and  note-books  and  cheap  jewellery. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Hack  Again.       209 

It  was  the  hint  about  presents  to  those  left  be- 
hind which  bore  greatest  weight  with  the  fisher- 
men. It  never  failed.  But  we  remembered  their 
cottages  and  the  sadness  of  their  homes,  and  it  an- 
gered us  that  they  should  be  duped  into  wasting 
their  hard-won  earnings  on  tawdry  ornaments.  It 
seems  to  be  their  fate  to  be  cheated  by  every  one. 
Even  the  peddler,  like  the  parson  and  the  landlord, 
can  pervert  Scripture  to  their  discomfort. 

Still,  there  was  a  pleasant  suggestion  of  holiday- 
making  in  the  square.  It  was  the  first  time  we 
had  seen  the  Western  Islanders  amusing  them- 
selves. True,  they  did  it  very  solemnly.  There 
was  little  laughter  and  much  silence  ;  but  at  least 
a  touch  of  brightness,  was  given  to  the  gloom  of 
their  long  life  of  work  and  want. 

Even  on  Sunday  we  thought  the  people  more 
cheerful.  In  the  morning  the  women,  the  little 
shawls  over  their  shoulders,  their  heads  still  bare, 
the  men  in  blue  cloth,  many  without  coats,  again 
filled  the  streets  on  their  way  to  church.  In  the 
afternoon  we  walked  to  two  near  fishing  villages. 
In  one  an  old  fisherman  was  talking  about  Christ 
to  a  few  villagers.  We  sat  a  while  close  to  the  sea, 
looking  out  to  the  next  village,  gray  against  gray 
gold-lined  clouds,  to  the  water  with  the  light  fall- 
ing softly  across  it,  to  the  little  quiet  pools  in 
among  the  low  rocks  of  the  shore,  to  the  big  black 
boats  drawn  up  on  the  beach.  And  then,  as  we 
14 


210  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

walked  back  to  Fraserburgli,  the  mist  fell  sudden- 
ly. But  the  road  near  the  town  was  crowded  with 
the  men  in  blue  cloth  and  the  women  in  short 
skirts.  Some  were  singing  hymns  as  they  walked. 
To  us  they  looked  strong  and  healthy,  and  even 
happy.  It  seemed  as  if  this  life  on  the  east  coast 
must  make  np  for  many  of  the  hardships  they 
endure  in  the  deserts  of  their  western  home. 

That  same  evening  in  the  hotel  we  heard  about 
life  in  Fraserburgli,  which  looks  so  prosperous  to 
the  stranger.  A  Catholic  priest  came  into  the  din- 
ing-room after  supper.  He  seemed  very  tired. 
He  had  been  visiting  the  sick  all  day,  he  told  us. 
Measles  had  broken  out  among  the  women  and 
girls  from  the  Hebrides.  Many  had  already  died ; 
more  had  been  carried  to  the  hospital.  The  rooms 
provided  for  them  by  the  curers  were  small  and 
overcrowded.  So  long  as  they  were  kept  in  their 
present  quarters,  so  long  would  disease  and  death 
be  their  portion.  Their  condition  was  dreadful ; 
but  they  worked  hard,  and  never  complained.  He 
came  from  the  west  coast  of  Ireland,  he  said,  where 
Irish  poverty  is  at  its  worst,  but  not  even  there  had 
he  seen  misery  as  great  as  that  of  the  Western  Isl- 
anders. He  knew  it  well.  He  had  lived  with 
them  in  the  Long  Island,  where  many  are  Catho- 
lics. If  the  Highlands  were  represented  by  eighty- 
five  members,  all  wanting  Home  Kule,  more  would 
have  been  heard  about  destitution  in  the  Hebrides. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Sack  Again.        213 

In  the  prosperous  days  of  the  east  coast  fisheries 
the  people's  burden  had  been  less  heavy  ;  but  now 
they  came  to  the  fishing  towns  of  the  east,  the 
women  to  sicken  and  to  die,  the  men  to  beg  their 
way  back  as  best  they  could.  There  were  too  many 
fishermen  here,  just  as  at  home  landlords  thought 
there  were  too  many  crofters. 

The  fishers  also  shall  mourn,  and  all  they  that 
cast  angle  shall  lament,  and  they  that  spread  nets 
upon  the  waters  shall  languish. 

The  epidemic  and  its  causes  became  the  town 
talk.  The  Gaelic  Free  Kirk  minister,  differ  as  he 
might  from  the  Catholic  priest  on  every  other 
point,  on  this  could  but  agree  with  him.  He  told 
us  the  same  story  in  words  as  strong.  It  was 
shameful,  he  said,  the  way  these  poor  girls  were 
being  killed.  He  had  not  known  it  before ;  but 
now  that  he  did,  he  could  not  and  would  not  let  the 
matter  rest.  An  indignation  meeting  of  the  people 
of  Fraserburgh  was  called  for  the  day  we  left.  •  The 
town  was  placarded  with  the  notices.  Since  then 
the  report  must  have  gone  abroad.  Now  that 
agitation  in  Lewis  is  forcing  attention  to  the  isl- 
ands and  their  people,  in  London  there  has  been 
formed  a  committee  of  ladies  to  look  into  the  con- 
dition of  the  girls  and  women  who  work  on  the 
east  coast. 

That  last  morning,  as  we  stood  by  the  hotel  door, 
the  funeral  of  one  of  the  dead  women  passed  up 


214  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

the  street  towards  the  station.  Fifty  or  sixty  fish- 
ermen followed  the  coffin.  When  we  took  our 
seats  in  a  third-class  carriage  we  found  the  Free 
Kirk  minister  there  before  us.  The  coffin  had  just 
been  put  on  the  train.  Two  girls  came  up  to 
speak  to  him.  He  stretched  out  his  hand;  one 
took  and  held  it  as  she  struggled  to  answer  his 
questions;  the  other  turned  away  with  the  tears 
streaming  down  her  face.  As  the  train  started 
they  stood  apart,  their  heads  bent  low,  their  faces 
buried  in  their  shawls,  both  crying  as  if  their 
hearts  would  break.  And  so,  at  the  last,  we  saw 
only  the  sadness  of  Fraserburgh. 

We  had  intended  going  to  Peterhead  and  the 
smaller  fishing  towns  by  the  way;  but  our  ener- 
gy was  less  inexhaustible  than  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  east  coast.  Our  journey  had  been 
over-long.  We  were  beginning  to  be  anxious  to 
bring  it  to  an  end.  Xow  we  went  straight  to 

ABERDEEN, 

where  we  at  once  fell  back  into  ordinary  city  life. 
We  even  did  a  little  shopping  in  its  fine  new 
streets.  Its  large  harbor  seemed  empty  after  that 
of  Fraserburgh.  Many  fishing-boats  were  at  sea; 
many  had  gone  altogether.  The  fishing  season 
here  was  really  well  over.  We  walked  to  the  old 
town  after  dinner.  In  it  there  is  not  much  to  be 
seen  but  the  university  tower  with  the  famous 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        217 

crown  atop,  and  the  cathedral,  which  looked  mas- 
sive and  impressive  in  the  twilight.  We  saw 
much  more  of  Aberdeen ;  but  we  are  quite  of 
the  same  mind  as  Dr.  Johnson,  that  to  write  of 
such  well-known  cities  "with  the  solemnity  of 
geographical  description,  as  if  we  had  been  cast 
upon  a  newly  discovered  coast,  has  the  appearance 
of  a  very  frivolous  ostentation." 

From  Aberdeen  to  Edinburgh  we  trained  it  by 
easy  stages.     We  stopped  dften  ;  once  at 

MONTKOSE, 

where,  like  Dr.  Johnson,  and  for  that  matter,  every 
one  else  who  comes  here,  we  looked  to  the  Gram- 
pian Hills  in  the  distance.  The  town  itself  was 
not  picturesque.  The  guide-book  calls  it  neat  and 
Flemish,  probably  because  it  has  fewer  houses  with 
high  gables  turned  towards  the  street  than  can  be 
seen,  as  a  rule,  in  any  Scotch  town.  But  the  har- 
bor, of  which  the  guide-book  says  less,  was  fine.  We 
spent  hours  near  the  mouth  of  the  river,  looking 
over  to  the  fishermen's  houses  on  the  opposite 
shore.  There  were  constant  showers  as  we  sat 
there ;  every  few  minutes  the  sun  came  out  from 
the  clouds,  and  the  wet  roofs  glistened  and  glit- 
tered through  the  smoke  hanging  above  them.  In 
the  morning,  women,  packed  like  herrings  in  the 
huge  ferry-boats,  crossed  over  to  the  curing-houses. 
Now  and  then  a  fishing-boat  sailed  slowly  in. 


218  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

One  sees  little  from  the  cars.  Of  the  country 
through  which  we  passed  I  remember  only  occa- 
sional glimpses  of  the  sea  and  of  fishing  villages 
and  of  red  castles,  which  made  us  wish  we  were 
still  on  the  road.  Now  and  then,  as  we  sat  com- 
fortably in  the  railway-carriage,  we  determined  to 
walk  back  to  see  them,  or  to  get  a  tricycle  at  Edin- 
burgh and  "  do  "  the  whole  east  coast  over  again ; 
but  we  always  left*  our  determinations  with  the 
carriage.  Of  all  the  places  at  which  we  stopped, 
I  remember  best 

ARBROATH, 

the  sight  of  which  seemed  worth  his  whole  jour- 
ney to  Dr.  Johnson.  Little  is  left  of  the  abbey 
save  the  broken  walls  and  towers.  A  street  runs 
through  the  old  gate-house.  The  public  park  and 
children's  play-ground  lie  to  one  side  of  the  ruined 
church.  A  few  old  tombs  and  tablets  and  bits  of 
ornament  have  been  gathered  together  in  the  sac- 
risty, which  is  in  better  preservation  than  the  rest 
of  the  building.  We  found  them  less  interesting 
than  the  guide  who  explained  them.  He  gave  a 
poetical  touch  to  the  usual  verger  recitation,  and 
indeed  to  all  his  talk,  of  which  there  was  plenty. 
'Twas  better  to  have  loved  and  lost,  than  never  to 
have  loved  at  all,  was  his  manner  of  expressing 
regret  for  the  loss  of  an  old  engraving  of  the  ab- 
bey. There  were  many  hard  things  in  this  world, 
but  grass  was  soft ;  why,  then,  should  I  choose  the 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       219 

hard  things  ?  was  his  way  of  inviting  me  to  walk 
on  the  grass  instead  of  the  gravel.  But  it  was 
not  until  he  showed  us  the  original  copy,  full  of 
blots  and  corrections,  of  one  of  Burns's  poems  that 
we  found  he  too  was  a  poet  —  a  successful  poet, 
it  seemed,  for  he  had  sold  14,000  copies  of  his 
volume  of  poems — very  few,  he  thought.  If  he 
were  a  member  of  the  London  Society  of  Authors 
he  would  know  better.  He  had  given  the  last 
copy  to  William  Morris,  when  the  latter  was  in 
the  town.  William  Morris  did  not  wear  gaudy 
clothes,  not  he.  He  looked  like  a  sailor  in  his 
blue  flannel  shirt,  and  there  was  a  slit  in  his  hat. 
And  when  he  returned  to  London  he  sent  his 
"  Jason  "  to  his  fellow-poet  in  Arbroath. 

As  we  were  leaving,  he  told  us  how,  one  day, 
two  ladies  had  driven  up  to  the  abbey,  looked  at 
nothing,  but  at  once  asked  him  to  recite  his  "Ab- 
bey Gate."  He  did  so,  and  then,  without  a  word, 
they  slipped  a  guinea  into  his  hand,  and  there  were 
tears  on  their  cheeks.  He  never  knew  who  they 
were.  After  this,  we  felt  our  tribute  to  be  very 
small ;  but  he  clasped  our  hands  warmly  at  parting. 
There  was  something  out  of  the  common  in  our 
faces,-he  said. 

We  talked  to  no  one  else  in  Arbroath,  except  to 
a  pessimistic  stationer.  While  we  bought  his  pa- 
per he  grumbled  because  farmers  could  not  sell 
their  cattle  and  corn.  Some  people  said  the  coun- 


220  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

try  needed  protection  ;  "  but,  sir,  what  have  we  got 
to  protect  ?" 

Of  the  rest  of  the  journey  to  Edinburgh  my 
note-book  says  nothing,  and  little  remains  in  my 
memory.  But  I  know  that  when  we  walked  up 
from  the  station  to  "Waverley  Bridge,  and  looked 
to  the  gray  precipice  of  houses  of  the  Old  Town, 
we  realized  that  our  long  wanderings  had  not 
shown  us  anything  so  fine. 

And  now  our  journey  was  at  an  end.  Like  Dr. 
Johnson's,  it  began  and  finished  in  Edinburgh, 
but  it  resembled  his  in  little  else.  From  the  start, 
we  continually  took  liberties  with  his  route ;  we 
often  forgot  that  he  was  our  guide.  We  went  to 
places  he  had  never  seen ;  we  turned  our  backs 
upon  many  through  which  he  and  Boswell  had 
travelled.  But  at  least  he  had  helped  us  to  form 
definite  plans  without  weeks  of  hard  map-study 
which  they  otherwise  must  have  cost  us. 

We  had  come  back  wiser  in  many  ways.  In 
the  first  place,  we  had  learned  that  for  us  walking 
on  a  tour  of  this  kind,  or  indeed  of  any  kind,  is  a 
mistake.  Had  we  never  cycled,  perhaps  we  might 
not  have  felt  this  so  keenly.  Our  powers  of  en- 
durance are  not,  I  think,  below  the  average ;  but 
the  power  to  endure  so  many  miles  a  day  on  foot 
is  very  different  from  the  capacity  to  enjoy  them ; 
and  if  on  such  a  trip  one  proposes,  as  we  did,  to 
work,  without  pleasure  in  the  exercise,  how  can 


RTJINS  AT  ARBROATH. 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.       223 

one  hope  for  good  results  ?  But  for  the  two  days' 
coaching  on  the  west  coast,  the  necessary  steam- 
ing among  the  islands,  our  utter  collapse  on  the 
east  coast,  I  am  sure  we  never  should  have  worked 
at  all.  Day  after  day  we  were  dispirited,  disheart- 
ened, and  only  happy  when  we  were  not  walking. 
"We  went  to  bed  in  the  evening  and  got  up  in  the 
morning  wearied  and  exhausted.  The  usual  walk- 
ing tours  of  which  one  hears  mean  a  day's  climb- 
ing in  the  mountains,  or  a  day's  tramp  with  bag  or 
knapsack  sent  before  by  train  or  stage.  Under 
these  conditions  we  probably  would  not  be  the 
first  to  give  in.  But  to  be  as  independent  as  if  on 
a  tricycle,  to  have  one's  sketching  traps  when  need- 
ed, one  must  carry  a  knapsack  one's  self.  J 's 

weighed  between  twenty-five  and  thirty  pounds ; 
mine,  fifteen.  Never  before  have  I  appreciated  so 
well  the  true  significance  of  Christian's  burden. 
But  even  worse  than  this  constant  strain  on  our 
shoulders  was  the  monotony  of  our  pace.  Whether 
the  road  was  good  or  bad,  level  or  hilly,  there  was 
no  change,  no  relief.  In  cycling,  for  one  hard 
day's  work  you  know  you  will  have  two  of  pleas- 
ure. As  for  short-cuts,  they  are,  as  a  rule,  out  of 
the  question.  One  does  not  know  the  country 
through  which  one  is  passing ;  it  is  the  exception 
to  meet  a  native.  After  cycling  more  thousands 
of  miles  than  we  have  walked  hundreds,  we  know 
it  to  be  not  mere  theorizing  when  we  declare  that 


224  Our  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 

no  comparison  between  the  two  methods  of  travel- 
ling is  possible.  One  is  just  enough  work  to  make 
the  pleasure  greater ;  the  other  is  all  work. 

Our  experience  has  taught  us  to  be  sceptical 
about  the  tramps  of  other  days  who  saw  Europe 
afoot.  We  wonder  if  they  told  the  whole  story. 
Of  modern  tramps,  none  has  given  such  a  delight- 
ful record  as  has  Mr.  Stevenson  of  the  walk  he 
took  with  a  donkey  through  the  Cevennes.  And 
yet,  even  with  him,  if  you  read  between  his  lines, 
or,  for  that  matter,  the  lines  themselves,  you  real- 
ize that,  charming  as  his  story  is  for  us,  the  reality 
for  him  was  wearisome,  depressing,  and  often  pain- 
ful, and  that  probably  to  it  is  to  be  referred  much 
of  his  after  physical  weakness.  We  have  also  had 
a  new  light  thrown  upon  the  life  of  tramps  at 
Lome,  who  are  so  often  supposed  to  have  chosen 
the  better  part.  Theirs  is  as  much  a  life  of  toil  as 
if  they  broke  stones  on  the  same  roads  over  which 
they  journey.  They  are  not  to  be  envied,  but 
pitied.  The  next  time  one  begs  from  you  as  he 
passes,  give  him  something  out  of  your  charity ; 
he  deserves  it. 

However,  many  drawbacks  as  there  were  to  our 
walk,  we  do  not  regret  it.  In  no  other  way  could 
we  have  come  to  know  the  country  and  the  people 
with  the  same  friendly  intimacy.  For  pure  enjoy- 
ment, it  would  be  best  to  go  over  the  greater  part 
of  our  route  in  a  yacht.  From  it  is  to  be  seen 


To  the  East  Coast,  and  Back  Again.        225 

much  beauty  and  little  misery.  The  coast-line  can 
be  followed,  excursions  made  inland.  But  a  yacht 
is  a  luxury  for  the  rich.  Besides,  on  it  one  lives 
one's  own  life,  not  that  of  the  country  one  has 
come  to  visit.  On  foot,  with  knapsacks  on  our 
backs,  we  often  passed  for  peddlers.  Certainly  we 
were  never  mistaken  to  be  tourists  of  means  or 
sportsmen.  Therefore  the  people  met  us  as  equals 
and  talked  to  us  freely. 

We  were  able  to  correct  the  vague  and  false  im- 
pressions with  which  we  had  started.  If  we  did 
not  master  the  geography  of  all  Scotland,  I  think — 
at  least  on  the  two  coasts  as  far  north  as  the  Cale- 
donian Canal — we  could  now  pass  an  examination 
with  credit.  We  learned  that  haggis  and  oatmeal 
figure  more  extensively  in  books  than  on  hotel  ta- 
bles ;  the  first  we  saw  not  at  all,  the  second  but 
twice,  and  then  it  was  not  offered  to  us. 

Above  all,  we  learned  the  burden  of  Scotland, 
whose  Highlands  have  been  laid  ;waste,  their  peo- 
ple brought  to  silence.  But  now  the  people  them- 
selves have  broken  their  long  silence,  and  a  cry 
has  gone  up  from  them  against  their  oppressors. 
If  by  telling  exactly  what  we  saw  we  can  in  the 
least  strengthen  that  cry,  we  shall  feel  that  our 
journeying  has  not  been  in  vain. 

THE    END. 


BY  WILLIAM  BLACK. 


HARPER'S    LIBRARY    EDITION. 
I2tno,  Cloth,  $i  25  per  volume. 


A  DAUGHTER  OF  HETH. 
A  PRINCESS   OF  THULE. 
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DILLY. 

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INT   SILK  ATTIRE. 
JUDITH  SHAKESPEARE.     Ill'd. 
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MADCAP  VIOLET. 
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SUNRISE. 

THAT  BEAUTIFUL  WRETCH.  Ill'd. 

THE  STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF 

A  HOUSE-BOAT.     Illustrated. 
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Published  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  New  York. 

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BY  CHAS.  DUDLEY  WARNER. 


STUDIES  IN  THE  SOUTH  AND  WEST,  with 
Comments  on  Canada,  pp.  iv.,  484.  Post  8vo, 
Half  Leather.  (Just  Head//.) 

THEIR  PILGRIMAGE.  Richly  Illustrated  by  C.  S. 
REINHART.  pp.  viii.,  364.  Post  8vo,  Half  Leath- 
er, $2  00. 

Aside  from  the  delicious  story— its  wonderful  portraitures  of  char- 
acter and  its  dramatic  development— the  book  is  precious  to  ;ill  who 
know  anything  about  the  great  American  watering-places,  for  it  con- 
tains incomparable  descriptions  of  those  famous  n-Mirts  and  their  fre- 
quenters. Even  without  the  aid  of  Mr.  lieiuhart's  brilliant  drawing!', 
Mr.  Warner  conjures  up  word-pictures  of  Cape  May,  Newport,  Sarato- 
ga, Lake  George,  Uichfleld  Springs,  Niagara,  the  White  Mountains, 
and  all  the  rest,  which  strike  the  eve  like  photographs,  so  clear  is  ev- 
ery outline.  But  Mr.  Heiuhart's  designs  tit  into  the  text  so  closely 
that  we  could  not  bear  to  part  with  a  single  one  of  them. — A".  1'.  Jour- 
nal of  Commerce. 

The  author  touches  the  canvas  here  and  there  with  lines  of  color 

that  fix  and  identify  American  character Of  the  fancy  and  humor  of 

Mr.Warner, which  in  witchery  of  their  play  and  power  are  quite  inde- 
pendent of  this  or  that  subject,  there  is  nothing  to  add.  lint  acknowl- 
edgment is  due  Mr.  Retnhart  for  nearly  eighty  finely  conceived  draw- 
ings, and  to  the  publishers  for  the  substantial  and  rich  letter-press  and 
Covers.— Boston  Globe. 

Mr.  Warner's  pen-pictures  of  the  characters  typical  of  each  resort,  of 
the  manner  of  life  followed  at  each,  of  the  humor  and  absurdities  pe- 
culiar to  Saratoga,  or  Newport,  or  Bar  Harbor,  as  the  case  may  be,  are 
as  good-natured  as  they  are  clever.  The  satire,  when  there  is  any,  is 
of  the  mildest,  and  the  general  tone  is  that  of  one  glad  to  look  on"  the 
brightest  side  of  the  cheerful,  pleasure-seeking  world  with  which  he 
mingle.-.  ...  In  Mr.  Reiuhart  the  author  has  an  assistant  who  has 
done  with  his  pencil  almost  exactly  what  Mr.Warner  has  accomplished 
with  his  pen.  His  drawings  are  spirited,  catch  with  wonderful  success 
the  tone  and  costume  of  each  place  visited,  and  abound  in  good-nat- 
ured fun.— Christian  Union,  N.  Y. 

Mr.  Heinhart's  spirited  and  realistic  illustrations  are  verv  attractive, 
and  contribute  to  make  an  unusually  handsome  book.  We  have  al- 
ready commented  upon  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  text :  and  the  hap- 
py blending  of  travel  and  fiction  which  we  looked  forward  to  with 
confidence  did,  iu  fact,  distinguish  this  story  among  the  serials  of  the 
year. — A".  1'.  Evening  Post. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

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BY  W.  D.  HO  WELLS. 

MODERN  ITALIAN  POETS.    Essays  and  Versions.    With 
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A  portfolio  of  delightsome  studies  among  the  Italian  poets;  mus- 
ings iu  a  golden  granary  full  to  the  brim  with  good  things.  .  .  .  We 
venture  to  say  that  no  acute  and  penetrating  critic  surpasses  Mr. 
Howells  in  true  insight,  in  polished  irony,  in  effective  and  yet  graceful 
treatment  of  his  theme,  in  that  light  and  indescribable  touch  that  lifts 
yon  over  a  whole  sea  of  froth  and  foam,  and  fixes  your  eye,  not  on  the 
froth  and  foam,  but  on  the  solid  objects,  the  true  heart  and  soul  of  the 
theme.— Critic,  N.  Y. 

A  more  companionable,  entertaining,  stimulating  work  than  this 
book  has  not  been  printed  fur  many  a  day.  It  is  a  book  to  be  studied 
privately,  to  be  read  aloud,  to  be  cherished  and  quoted  and  reread 
many  times,  and  every  reader  of  it  will  cry  for  more  translations  from 
the  Italian  by  the  same  delight-conferring  pen.— Chicago  Tribune. 

This  is  a  noble  volume,  the  fruit  of  studies  began  twenty  years  ago 
in  Italy.  .  .  .  The  subject  is  discussed  with  all  the  rare  fascination  of 
style  and  thought  which  Mr.  Howells  is  so  well  qualified  to  bring  to  it, 
and  the  volume  will  be  treasured  by  every  lover  of  poetry  of  whatever 
period  or  clime. — Christian  at  H'orfc,  N.  Y. 

No  living  writer  could  give  us  this  picture  of  a  literary  movement 
with  such  delicacy  of  appreciation  and  discrimination.  The  period 
embraced  is  about  a  century;  the  names  selected  comprise  all  the 
poets  which  a  survey  of  the  movement,  now  over,  distinguishes  as 
principal  factors  iu  it — Hartford  Courant. 


"April  Hopes"  is  a  specimen  of  Mr.  Howells's  well-known  consum- 
mate art  as  a  delineator  of  young  men  and  maidens,  and  a  chronicler 
of  nil  the  fluctuations  of  love  affairs.  From  the  life-like  description  of 
Harvard  Class  Day  and  its  participants,  in  the  opening  chapters,  to  the 
conclusion  of  the  story,  Mr.  Howells  is  at  his  best. — A'.  Y.  Journal  of 
Commerce. 

Mr.  Howells  never  wrote  a  more  bewitching  book.  It  is  useless  to 
deny  the  rarity  and  worth  of  the  skill  that  can  report  so  perfectly  and 
with  such  exquisite  humor  all  the  fugacious  and  manifold  emotions 
of  the  modern  maiden  and  her  \over.-Philadelphia  Press, 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  !?EW  YORK. 

Any  of  the  above  works  8tnt  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part 
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BY  CONSTANCE  F.  WOOLSON. 

EAST  ANGELS,     pp.  592.     16mo,  Cloth,  $1  25. 
ANNE.    Illustrated,    pp.  540.    16mo,  Cloth,  $1  25. 
FOR  THE  MAJOR,     pp.  208.    16mo,  Cloth,  $1  00. 

CASTLE    NOWHERE,     pp.  386.     16mo,  Cloth,  $1  00. 

(.4  New  Edition.) 

RODMAN  THE  KEEPER.     Southern  Sketches,     pp. 
340.     16mo,  Cloth,  $1  00.     (A  New  Edition.) 


There  is  a  certain  bright  cheerfulness  in  Miss  Woolsou's  writing 
which  invests  all  her  characters  with  lovable  qualities — Jewish  Advo- 
cate, N.  Y. 

Miss  Woolson  is  among  our  few  successful  writers  of  interesting 
magazine  stories,  and  her  skill  and  power  are  perceptible  in  the  de- 
lineation of  her  heroines  no  less  than  in  the  suggestive  pictures  of 
local  life.—  Jewish  Messenger,  N.  Y. 

Constance  Feiiimore  Woolson  may  easily  become  the  novelist 
laureate.— Boston  Globe. 

Miss  Woolson  has  a  graceful  fancy,  a  ready  wit,  a  polished  style,  and 
conspicuous  dramatic  power ;  while  her  skill  in  the  development  of  a 
story  is  very  remarkable. — London  Life. 

Miss  Woolson  never  once  follows  the  beaten  track  of  the  orthodox 
novelist,  but  strikes  a  new  and  richly  loaded  vein,  which  so  far  is  all 
her  own ;  and  thus  we  feel,  on  reading  one  of  her  works,  a  fresh  sen- 
sation, and  we  put  down  the  book  with  a  sigh  to  think  our  pleasant 
task  of  reading  it  is  finished.  The  author's  lines  must  have  fallen  to 
her  in  very  pleasant  places ;  or  she  has,  perhaps,  within  herself  the 
wealth  of  womanly  love  and  tenderness  she  pours  so  freely  into  all 
she  writes.  Such  books  as  hers  do  much  to  elevate  the  moral  tone  of 
the  day — a  quality  sadly  wanting  in  novels  of  the  time — Whitehall 
Review,  London. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

The  above  works  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the 
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BY  AM£LIE  EIVES. 

A  BROTHER  TO  DRAGONS,  AND  OTHER  OLD-TIME 
TALES.     Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Extra,  f  1  00. 

VIRGINIA    OF    VIRGINIA.      A  Story.      Illustrated. 
Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Extra,  $1  00. 


Oue  is  permitted  to  discover  qualities  of  mind  and  a  proficiency  and 
capacity  in  art  from  which  something  new  and  distinctively  the  work 
of  genius  may  be  anticipated  in  American  literature. — Boston  Globe. 

Miss  Rives  has  imagination,  breadth,  and  a  daring  and  courage 
oftenest  spoken  of  as  masculine.  Moreover,  she  is  exquisitely  poet- 
ical, and  her  ideals,  with  all  the  mishaps  of  her  delineations,  are  of  an 
exalted  order. — y.  Y.  Star. 

It  was  little  more  than  two  years  ago  that  Miss  Rives  made  her  first 
literary  conquest,  a  conquest  so  complete  and  astonishing  as  at  once 
to  give  her  fame.  How  well  she  has  sustained  and  added  to  the  repu- 
tation she  so  suddenly  won,  we  all  know,  and  the  permanency  of  that 
reputation  demonstrates  conclusively  that  her  success  did  not  depend 
upon  the  lucky  striking  of  a  popular  fancy,  but  that  it  rests  upon  en- 
during qualities  that  are  developing  more  and  more  richly  year  by 
year.—  Richmond  State. 

It  is  evident  that  the  author  has  imagination  in  an  unusual  degree, 
much  strength  of  expression,  and  skill  in  delineating  character. — Bos- 
ton Journal. 

There  are  few  young  writers  who  begin  a  promising  career  with  so 
much  spontaneity  and  charm  of  expression  as  is  displayed  by  Miss 
Rives. — Literary  World,  Boston. 

The  trait  which  the  author  seems  to  take  the  most  pleasure  in  de- 
picting is  the  passionate  loyalty  of  a  girl  to  her  lover  or  of  a  yonug 
wife  to  her  husband,  and  her  portrayal  of  this  trait  has  feeling,  and  is 
set  off  by  an  unconventional  style  and  brisk  movement. — The  Book 
Buyer,  N.  Y. 

There  is  such  a  wealth  of  imagination,  such  an  exuberance  of  strik- 
ing language  in  the  productions  of  this  author,  as  to  attract  and  hold 
the  reader. — Toledo  Blade. 

Miss  Rives  is  essentially  a  teller  of  love  stories,  and  relates  them 
with  such  simple,  straightforward  grace  that  she  at  once  captures  the 
sympathy  and  interest  of  the  reader.  .  .  .  There  is  a  freshness  of  feeling 
and  a  mingling  of  pathos  and  hurnor  which  are  simply  delicious.—  Sew 
London  Telegraph. 

PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

ARPK.R  &  BROTHKKS  will  send  either  of  the  above  works  by  mail, 
postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States  or  Canada,  on 
receipt  of  the  price. 


BEN-HUR:  A  TALE  OF  THE  CHRIST. 

By  LEW.  WALLACE.    New  Edition  from  New  Electrotype 
Plates,     pp.  560.    16rao,  Cloth,  $1  50;  Half  Calf,  $3  00. 


Anything  so  startling,  new,  and  distinctive  as  the  lending  feature  of 
this  romance  does  not  often  appear  in  works  of  fiction.  . .  .  Some  of 
Mr.  Wallace's  writing  is  remarkable  for  its  pathetic  eloquence.  The 
scenes  described  in  the  New  Testament  are  re-wriiten  with  the  power 
and  skill  of  an  accomplished  master  of  style. — X.  Y.  Times. 

Its  real  basis  is  a  description  of  the  life  of  the  Jews  and  Romans  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  and  this  is  both  forcible  and  brill- 
iant. .  .  .  We  are  carried  through  a  surprising  variety  of  scenes;  we 
witness  a  sea-flght,  a  chariot-race,  the  internal  economy  of  a  Human 
galley,  domestic  interiors  at  Antioch,  at  Jerusalem,  and  among  the 
tribes  of  the  desert:  palaces,  prisons,  the  haunts  of  dissipated  Unman 
youth,  the  houses  of  pious  families  of  Israel.  There  is  plenty  of  ex- 
citing incident;  everything  is  animated,  vivid,  and  glowing.— A'.  Y. 
Tribune. 

From  the  opening  of  the  volume  to  the  very  close  the  reader's  in- 
terest will  be  kept  at  the  highest  pitch,  and  the  novel  will  be  pro- 
nounced by  all  one  of  the  greatest  novels  of  the  day. — Boston  Punt. 

It  is  full  of  poetic  beauty,  as  though  born  of  an  Eastern  sage,  and 
there  is  sufficient  of  Oriental  customs,  geography,  nomenclature,  etc., 
to  greatly  strengthen  the  semblance. — Boston  Commonwealth. 

"  Ben-Hur  "  is  interesting,  and  its  characterization  is  fine  and  strong. 
Meanwhile  it  evinces  careful  study  of  the  period  in  which  the  scene  is 
laid,  and  will  help  those  who  read  it  with  reasonable  attention  to  real- 
ize the  nature  and  conditions  of  Hebrew  life  in  Jerusalem  and  Ro- 
man life  at  Autioch  at  the  time  of  our  Saviour's  advent.— Examiner, 
N.Y. 

It  is  really  Scripture  history  of  Christ's  time,  clothed  gracefully  and 
delicately  in  the  flowing  and  loose  drapery  of  modern  fiction.  .  . .  Few 
lute  works  of  fiction  excel  it  in  genuine  ability  and  interest. — If.  Y. 
Graphic. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  and  delightful  books.  It  is  as  real  and 
warm  as  life  itself,  and  as  attractive  as  the  grandest  and  most  heroic 
chapters  of  history.—  Indianapolis  Journal. 

The  book  is  one  of  unquestionable  power,  and  will  be  read  with  un- 
wonted interest  by  many  readers  who  are  weary  of  the  conventional 
novel  and  romance. — Boston  Journal. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

The  above  work  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the 
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